Living The Sweet Life

Now Selling Cookies!!

2011-09-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

I finally joined the Etsy world!! Yay! I've listed some sample sugar cookies that anyone is welcome to order. I'll even ship them to you!

Take a look-see. If you want something that you're not seeing, ask me. I love to do custom orders.

Also, if you're local I can do custom cakes as well. For now I'm only shipping cookies, though.

Sweet Daze Confections on Etsy

Grrrr!!!

2011-08-11T19:28:00.001-07:00

I may be killing me some birds soon. Every time I plant something, the freaking birds rip it out or dig up the seeds. They pulled out 6 tomato plants today, all but the biggest of my pickling cucumbers plant, 2 Straight 8 cucumber seedlings and every single time a bean seed sprouts, they pull it up too. I am so sick of replanting my garden and losing so many plants to those thieving birds!

And seriously, our new neighborhood is infested with birds. I have never seen so many birds in one area before.

Ash got a BB gun for Christmas. I'm *this close* to hiding out and using it on one of those demons.

The August Garden

2011-08-09T19:34:00.001-07:00

The heat is almost over, thank goodness. Once the humidity sets in in late July and August here in Arizona, it really is unbearable. Give me the dry heat with 115 degree temps any day over 105 with 60% humidity. I don't even know why I do my hair and makeup with this weather. My hair just ends up being a poofy mess and my makeup just melts right off my face. It's gross.

I worked a little bit at a time clearing rocks and mixing in compost to two new vegetable beds. I really had to take it slow. After 15 minutes I felt dizzy and my heart would be racing. I finally got it all finished and Mike helped me plant my fall tomatoes on Monday. I always know when I plant the fall tomatoes that I'm going to lose a few of them. It just happens. So I grow some extras as back-ups.

As you can see, I moved all of the bucket gardens against the wall to make room, and I really wondered why I hadn't put them there to begin with. I like it much better. Oh well. I still have a little bit of tidying up to do, but here is the start of the fall garden.

I put those boards on the edge of the beds to help keep the rock from sliding back into the soil. We'll see how it works.

Basically, both new beds are devoted to tomatoes. Mainly because I'm a freak.

This bed still has the peppers and one last tomato plant that made it through the summer. I recently planted 3 types of cucumbers and 2 types of summer squash along the back.

The cucumbers have just started to put out tendrils to climb the trellis.

There are so many rocks in this bed! It's very frustrating. I remove as many as I can and then the next day, they're back. I'm pretty sure they're growing in there.

These little tomato plants were volunteers from the spring plant. I really liked that tomato so I pulled out all but 2 of the seedlings and am letting them grow. Hopefully they'll be the same as last time.

There's finally a little squash growing on this plant. It was attacked early on with squash bugs. I never got a single squash bug at the old house, but they keep coming back at this one. They are so nasty and I itch for days after I see one. The pumpkin plant next to this plant has also been attacked, but it's outlook isn't as promising. Boo!!

That's pretty much it so far. Here's to hoping for a very late frost and an abundant harvest!

Well, I Feel Gypped

2011-08-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Back to school day is today. The kids have been vibrating with excitement about this day for a while now. They started a countdown about 3 weeks ago. This year Mike said that I probably shouldn't walk Ash to his class and take pictures of him at his desk (a yearly tradition now) since he was going into the 5th grade and that would probably embarrass him. That was sad to me. But I still had Bella! I knew she would be alright with me coming into her class with her for so I could get some pictures and hugs.

This morning just felt off, though. Both kids were up before me and had dressed, fed, and packed themselves. It was like I was hardly needed. Ouch! Bella did ask me to put curls in her hair, but she didn't want me to style it. She just wanted to wear her giant flower headband. (That girl loves giant flowers and bows in her hair.)

Then I took them outside for pictures. Ash, for as excited about the first day as he was, looks miserable in all of the pictures. He's just too cool I guess.

Once we got to the school, we waited in the cafeteria for the individual grades to be called so they could go to their new class. Ash and his friend decided to just head out to their class by themselves. He said bye to me, but Mike was standing with Bella by her class and never got to say goodbye. Sad.

When it was Bella's turn, the principal made an announcement that the parents should just say goodbye here so as not to prolong any sadness for the kids. Kind of like ripping off a bandage quickly. Well, shoot! I really wanted to walk my child to her class and take more pictures. It wasn't to be.

As we were leaving, I quickly looked through the few pictures I took. There weren't very many that even turned out well. Overall, I just feel let down. Maybe it's really the feeling of my kids growing up so quickly and not needing me as much as they used to. Yeah, that's probably it. At least they still need me to pick them up at the end of the school day!

Putting It Up

2011-07-31T13:11:00.000-07:00

My strawberry plants this year did the best they've ever done. However, that's not really saying much since all the plants in prior years basically did nothing. This year we each got a few berries to enjoy before the heat turned the plants into crispy little dead things. That doesn't mean we won't be able to enjoy all kinds of strawberry goodness though.

My lovely sister Jenna recently found a smoking deal on strawberries so she ended up buying 18 pounds to put up in her freezer so they would have strawberries as they needed them. The next day I noticed a similar sale on strawberries in my area. I'm a big ol' copy cat. Now, I only bought 8 pounds because my family is not as big as hers, but who knows. The sale goes on for another couple of days so I may just go get more.

"Putting up" strawberries is super easy.

I first washed and hulled the berries.

Then I arranged them on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer until they were pretty much frozen throughout. This makes it so your strawberries don't freeze into one large strawberry clump that's hard to do much of anything with.

Once they were frozen I could put them into a freezer bag and suck out the extra air. Now they will stay perfectly fresh and delicious for months to come.

And what to do with all of those empty plastic cartons? They are going to make perfect little seed starting greenhouses for some of my fall plants. Nice!

Well, That's Interesting

2011-07-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

With the temperature at a balmy 108, I decided to get going with my fall garden. I've had my tomato plants growing in their little pots happily outside for about a month now. Just yesterday I began clearing more rock to make 2 more vegetable garden plots. (Mike said that as long as we can just cover the areas up with the rock again when it's time to move, I can make as many garden beds as I like.) Today I went out to my buckets and began pulling plants that I've gotten a little sick of looking at and tending to with little to no reward for my efforts. It's time to be planting green beans again and I was so unbelievably happy with how they turned out this spring that they're a must to grow this fall.

As I was pulling out the swiss chard (which is still growing like crazy even though it isn't shaded and I hardly pay any attention to it) I noticed the strangest thing. All of the plants had long thick tap roots that looked like carrots. The color of the stems of the chard matched the color of the root. I guess it shouldn't have surprised me since swiss chard is in the beet family, but I thought it was pretty cool to see. When Ash saw the roots he said "Oooh! Carrots! Let's eat them." I'm sure you could eat them, but I'm not going to. I'm a wuss. Or didn't you already know?

My Little Pony Cake and Catch-Up

2011-07-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

I guess I don't really have much to say in this blog currently. Summer break is almost over for the kids and they couldn't be more excited about that. It's hard to have a great summer vacation when you live in the desert. Nobody wants to be playing outside in 115 degree heat. The two of them just really want to be back at school with their friends.

If all goes well, I'll be going back to school this fall as well. It's never too late to start college, right? I'm going to be starting with just general education credits and see where I want to go from there. I'm just waiting on the financial part of it all before it's set in stone. I am excited though. Excited and nervous. It's been 12 years since I was in school. I'm sure it will be quite the adjustment for us all.

I wanted to start posting the cakes I'm doing again, just so there will be a little activity on my blog. It's sad to see it just sitting here all alone.

Today I made a My Little Pony themed cake. As a side note, I find it funny how all the toys that were popular when I was a kid are just being recycled for today's kids. I do think the ponies were a lot cuter when I was a kid though.

Tangent over.

This cake didn't take very long at all to make. I bought the ponies because there was no way I wanted to try to make them. All of the other decorations are made from fondant. I was definitely going for the "more is more" look on this one. I think it turned out cute. It should be picked up in a few hours and then I'll find out how they like it.

The Makings of a Cake

2011-06-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

So it's been 3 months since I last blogged. Should we talk about it or just move on and pretend it never happened? Yeah I like that second choice too.

Today's post will be extremely picture heavy and because of that I've decided to not write too much. As I was working on a cake order last week, I thought that it might be interesting to see all of the steps that go into making one of my delicious "masterpieces" (ha!). So I took some pictures of the work as it went along. Now, you get to see it all. Start to finish. Enjoy!

Obviously, I had already baked my cakes and started icing at the point when I decided to do this. Here is the first layer of the bottom tier with the filling layer of icing.

Now I have to level the top layer.

I remove the scraps to leave a perfectly flat layer of cake.

Set it on top of the bottom layer...

and begin the icing process. I'm just using a large pastry bag fitted with an icing tip to make the icing process go quicker.

Then I use a bench scraper to smooth the side of the cake.

Nice and smooth

Then I smooth the top.

Beautiful.

Now I do the same things for the top tier.

Both tiers, nice and smooth. Now they go into the fridge to firm up a little.

Here are the fondants and coloring I'm using for this cake. I like to use premade fondant because I think it tastes better, is easier to work with and I don't have to worry about the huge mess of making fondant. Electric pink food coloring from Americolor.

Add some color to the fondant...

and knead away.

Finished fondant color. Set it aside while I work on the details.

Very blurry picture. I need to dust the detail pieces with edible pink glitter.

Sparkly.

Sparklier.

Time to roll the fondant.

All rolled out

and draped over the bottom tier.

Smoothed and the excess is cut away.

Next tier's turn

Trim away the extra fondant.

Place supports in the bottom tier along with a nice glop of icing for good measure.

Top tier goes on carefully and a dowel driven through it all for stability.

Black fondant for details.

Stripes go on the bottom tier

Cut out some pink stars

Glitterize the stars and place them on the stripes.

Black diamonds go on the top tier.

More stars and add the icing borders.

Add the final details and ta-da! Cake complete.

Time to clean up the humungoid mess this baby left behind.

Bucket Garden Walkthrough and a Cake!!

2011-03-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

It's hard to see how much something has changed when you look at it at least 3 times a day. After seeing my last garden update post, I was amazed. Things really are growing! It just goes to show, you don't need a ton of land or anything fancy to be able to grow some food for your family.

We haven't been able to harvest anything as of yet, but that's quickly about to change. Our first teeny tiny harvest will be.....

A cute little strawberry! Tomorrow or the next day it should be perfectly sweet and ripe. Maybe we'll have a small first harvest ceremony or something silly like that. The strawberry plants are doing worlds better than any of my past plants, that's for sure.

The containers altogether are doing fairly well. Some things are growing quicker than others. The cucumbers are taking forever to start really growing. I was hoping they would have started climbing the trellis by the time the cabbages began forming heads. No such luck so far.

I am seeing little flower buds forming on the cucumbers though so hopefully they will take off shortly.

I also see the first baby zucchini coming in!! WooHoo!! I'm sure you all know how much I love zucchini. I'm so hoping for an abundance of it this year.

And of course, the star of the garden, my tomato plants are doing great! There are at least blossoms on every plant (except for the ones in the ground. Hmmmm. I wonder why.) and most have baby tomatoes growing away.

So far, I'm really enjoying my little bucket garden.

Oh yeah!! I finally made another cake. Seriously, how long has it been? For. Ev. Er. So a friend asked me if I could make her daughter's birthday cake. She wanted a sheet cake and said "Purple. No flowers. Kind of abstract-y." Hmmm. I have absolutely no clue how to make an abstract-y sheet cake. From what I know of her daughter though, I thought more like 80's funky style. So I went with purple zebra stripes. It just felt right to me.

Now I know I could make some kick butt zebra stripes with fondant. It would give nice crisp edges and look really, really good. But I also know that fondant hates being colored purple. Seriously. It takes forever to get to the right color and then fades faster than you could imagine. Especially in the sun. The party was planned for outdoors at the park. So I decided to use buttercream and do my best at getting it to look like zebra stripes.

I think it ended up looking more like fat purple leaches all over the cake. Yum!

Either way, the birthday girl loved it and in the end, leaches or no leaches, that's all that matters. Right?

Withdrawals! I'm having withdrawals!!

2011-03-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

It has now been about 4 weeks since I was able to bake anything. The oven in the new house is weird. The stove top works great, the broiler works great but the oven doesn't heat up to anything hotter than maybe 200 degrees. I attempted to make blueberry muffins when we first moved in and they took about an hour and a half to bake and even then they were a really strange texture.

I bought an oven thermometer and tried to figure out a way to get the oven hot enough to do little things. I would turn the broiler on and let it heat up to as hot as I could get it and then change it to the bake option. The temperature would quickly drop and I was left so very frustrated and sad.

For whatever reason, I kept putting off calling the property management company. Mike and I so do not want to be those tenants that call with problems all the time, but we realize that we cannot go without a properly working oven.

Yesterday was my breaking point. My sister Jenna had a blog post about a new cookbook she got and the recipes she made from it looked and sounded so delicious. I am obsessed with cookbooks. I read them. I don't just look through them to find a particular recipe. I seriously sit down and read them like a novel. So I ordered a copy of that cookbook and decided it was time to get the oven fixed.

They will be here tomorrow morning.

Yay!! No more gazing longingly at my pantry full of baking ingredients. No more turning down cake orders because I don't have a proper oven. No more denying that utterly important part of who I am.

Plus, my new cookbook should be here just in time to test the oven out.

New Garden Update

2011-03-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

I think I have a sickness. I couldn't help myself. I kept reading comments and hearing suggestions on putting in a garden here. The idea was planted. It grew and it grew until I couldn't hold back any longer. Actually I'm one of those people that once I start thinking about anything that I want to do (or need to do) I cannot stop thinking about it and it will drive me crazy until I do it.

So it was with the backyard.

I had purchased a ton (not literally) of peat moss and compost when I thought Mike was going to build me a bed. Once that idea was dismissed, I was using the soil stuff to make my own potting mix and filling containers to plant in. The thing was there was still so much left over. I was lying in bed the other morning and looking out on my containers and all of the empty yard space that was left. Then I thought, I could really probably just scoot the rocks to the side and till in the peat and the compost and plant right there. No need to build anything. So I wandered out into the yard, still in my pj's and began to clear a very small round area, just to test the waters. They cleared beautifully. Then I stuck my garden fork into the ground to see if I would be able to work with it. It slid in beautifully. Nice! So I mixed in my amendments and planted a single tomato plant.

Well, like I said, it's a sickness. Later in the day I decided to clear an entire 8 foot by 2 foot strip and planted beans, squash, sunflowers and more tomatoes. I was planning on lining the front of the strip with marigolds but needed to go buy some. Here's how it looked.

So today after I dropped Mike at work and "got my hairs did", I stopped by Lowes for marigolds. I did buy some, however I also saw 4 packs of heirloom tomatoes and peppers for $1.99. I couldn't pass them up. I tried. Believe me I did. But I just couldn't. So when I got home, I extended that new plot. I planted everything I bought and now I'm done. I swear. I think.

Here's the updated pictures of the backyard garden.

I have a confession

2011-02-25T16:40:00.000-08:00

I would like to confess to all, here and now, that when it comes to gardening, I really have no idea what I'm doing. Nothing I do is scientific or based on any kind of real knowledge. For the most part, I put stuff in some sort of soil mix and hope for the best.

We've decided that for this growing season, we didn't want to take the plunge and pay what it would cost to build raised beds. Instead, we decided to use the containers we had available to us. I bought quite a few Rubbermaid totes to use for moving, that were just sitting in a corner in a nice little stack. I put some holes in the bottoms and, Tada, mini raised garden bed.

I'm really hoping this works out. It's such a smaller garden than I've had in previous years and I'm really trying to squeeze a lot of production out of it. Like I said, I really have no idea what I'm doing.

Wanna see what I'm trying? Okay!!

Here's my entire "garden". Pretty classy, eh?

In these first two round buckets I have 2 pepper plants and 2 strawberry plants in one and tomatoes and carrot seeds in the other. The totes have cucumbers, onions and cabbages in one and zucchini and onions in the other. That little round planter has more peppers.

These next ones have tomatoes and onions in the totes on the left. Then there's more cucumbers, cabbages and onions and peppers and tomatoes. The big round one has 3 tomato plants that I had growing from the other house.

These last 2 totes I just prepared. I was getting antsy with only the planters that I had. I mean, there's so much that I want to grow and nowhere to grow them. I will be planting green beans and herbs in one and probably squash in the other, but I'm not committed yet.

So, what do you think? Am I totally going to regret not building beds? I'm already pretty sure the answer will be yes, but I have to at least try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

the beginnings of garden 2.0

2011-02-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

I wanted to show the beginnings of my new garden. Our internet isn't up yet so I'm doing this from my cell phone. Talk about dedication!

I think we will be putting a couple of raised beds back here. Since we are renting we don't want to do too much but I have to have something! I've been growing a few tomato plants and pepper plants. Its been pretty chilly so they're not nearly as big as they should be but I'm happy to have them. I also just bought some onion plants and strawberries. Hopefully we'll get to make some progress today on the beds so we can get this show on the road and it can really start to feel like home.

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Changes are coming!!

2011-02-18T15:17:00.000-08:00

I'm a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad blogger. I know. But y'all, I have an excuse. I swear I do. Or actually, I think if I were honest with myself, I've just been having a two month (maybe even more) long pity-party. I don't want to blog about my problems. That's no fun! So I suppose I've just been avoiding this little place. It's been in the back of my mind the entire time though.

We are moving. It's a good thing. It was hard to see it as a good thing for a while, but I'm doing ok with it all now. I better be since the moving truck will be here tomorrow morning. Time to suck it up and move on.

So this blog will pick up with the joys of starting again. I will have a new garden although not nearly as big as what I've had in the past. I will also restart my cake decorating shtick. I think what I'm most excited about is the feeling of having a fresh start. I could really go for a fresh start right about now.

Is it really December already?

2010-12-01T14:37:00.000-08:00

Is it? Wow. That happened fast. Only two more days until Bella's 6th birthday. We are planning on having a girl's day at the mall which will include shopping, lunch and... getting her ears pierced!!! She is very excited. I'm excited for her.

Today I took her to get the stitches out of her finger. The Dr said it looked a little bit infected so she's back on antibiotics and will have another follow-up appointment next week. It does look pretty gnarly. I think we'll keep that baby bandaged up for a while until we can all look at it without feeling light-headed.

Ash won Student of the Month this month at school so I get to go see him accept his award at a school assembly this Friday. His teacher told me it was for citizenship and it really couldn't be any other child but Ash. That made me happy

I've been considering doing another 24 Days of Christmas Cookies this year, but decided against it for a couple reasons. One being that I'm not sure I could swing the cost of ingredients this year. Also, it got pretty difficult towards the end there to find new, interesting recipes to try. I think finding 24 more recipes would be seriously stretching for me and in all honesty, I've been stretched as much as I'd like to be lately. If you would like to see all of last year's cookies to get a refresher or to be inspired to start your holiday baking, take a look-see.
Day 1 Chocolate Pistachio Trees
Day 2 Eggnog Cookies
Day 3 Whit Chocolate Candy Cane Drops
Day 4 Meringue Snowflakes
Day 5 Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
Day 6 Gingersnaps
Day 7 Butter Cookie Cut Outs with Icing
Day 8 Chocolate Mint Snow-top Cookies
Day 9 Chocolate Mint Surprises
Day 10 Candy Cane Cookies
Day 11 Two-Tone Peanut Butter Slices
Day 12 Dream Cookies
Day 13 Gingerbread Cut Outs
Day 14 Cream Cheese Icebox Cookies
Day 15 The Snickers Cookie
Day 16 Rolo Cookies
Day 17 Russian Teacakes
Day 18 Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bars
Day 19 Snickerdoodles
Day 20 Chocolate Mint Thumbprints
Day 21 Glazed Toffee Bonbons
Day 22 Chocolate-Cherry Pinwheels
Day 23 Carrot Cake Cookies
Day 24 Spritz Cookies

Now I'm going to go black-out from making all of those hyperlinks.

Exhausted

2010-11-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

Can I just tell you how exhausted I am? No seriously, I'm exhausted. It has been such a trying few months in our lives here and last week put the cherry right on top.

It started when Liberty, our dog, escaped from the yard and we couldn't catch her for about an hour and a half. In that time she ran up to a little boy on his bike and pulled on his jacket sleeve. The little boy fell from his bike into the road and began crying. His dad claimed our dog had bitten him (nope) and cursed out my kids and then called the cops.

The police came and checked the boy out. He was perfectly fine besides a small bruise where his body hit the pavement. Then they checked out Liberty to make sure she wasn't vicious. She licked the officer's pants. Nope, not vicious at all. Just extremely playful and energetic.

Either way, we decided that there was just too much risk in keeping her. She's constantly darting out of the house at the slightest opportunity. I'm sure the neighbors are a little sick of seeing us chase her around the street. And although she has never bitten anyone before, that night was just too close for comfort. So, with many, many tears, we said goodbye to our dog. Mike's aunt took her and will search for a good home for her with the possibility of just keeping her.

The whole thing was just so heartbreaking to me. I still tear up thinking about it.

Then... we went to Mike's grandpa's house on Sunday for an early Thanksgiving. Bella was playing with her cousins in the yard. They had started to play on a lawn chair lifting the chair up when one of them was sitting in it and then letting it drop. When it was Bella's turn, she placed her hand in the wrong spot and the headrest part came unhooked from it's position. It slammed down and acted like a paper cutter, ripping the tip of her middle finger off.

I was sitting maybe 10 feet away from her when I heard her scream and I ran to her. As soon as I freed her hand and saw the damage, all I could think to do was cover her eyes. The tip was hanging by a small amount of flesh and she was screaming. I knew if she saw what I saw it would have been so much worse.

Aunts flocked to us. All I could manage to say was "It's gone. Her finger is gone." One aunt calmly asked if I had the tip over and over. Mike grabbed Bella and the family all looked and gave their opinion that there was nothing the hospital could really do about it. That there was nothing to stitch anything to, but we needed to take her so they could clean it and wrap it.

There was just so much commotion and so many people talking at once that I just yelled out, "no more talking! Let's go!"

We had her finger wrapped in ice and paper towels. There was so much blood. My pants were stained. I sat in the back of the car while Mike drove to the emergency room. Bella screamed the entire time asking if she was going to die. All I could think about was that this was my perfect baby girl and how much I didn't want her to lose a finger and be marred for the rest of her life.

I ran Bella in while Mike parked. We were brought into a room almost right away but it took more than an hour before a Dr came in. We prayed over her. I begged God to make her whole again. Call after call poured in from family members and friends also offering prayers and well-wishes.

When the Dr finally came in, he looked at her finger and assured us he could indeed stitch it all back together, and Bella's finger would be fine. They took x-rays and saw that the tip of the bone in that finger had also been fractured. We could actually see the bone sitting there where her finger tip used to be. It was quite gruesome.

Bella is now stitched up and almost as good as new. She's in a lot of pain still and I have her staying home from school for the whole week. It's a short week though so that's good. Her class is going on a field trip today and she is so sad that she has to miss it. I told her we would make a field trip here at home just for her. That seemed to make her happy.

I myself, like I said, am exhausted and wondering when all the bad stuff is going to end. Hmmph.

Wedding Cake

2010-11-21T11:30:00.001-08:00

I was just thinking how far I've come since making my very first wedding cake. The very first one was for my oldest sister Jenna's wedding. It was just a simple 3 tier periwinkle cake. The wedding was in Utah and I live in AZ and couldn't make it for the special day. My other sister Amanda was able to go up and so she brought the cake for me. As I was bringing the cake to Amanda's house the night before, I dropped one of the tiers on the sidewalk. I was absolutely mortified and just felt beaten by it all. Jenna appreciated the cake no matter how ugly it ended up being.

Now, more than 5 years later, I've made another family member's wedding cake. This one turned out quite a bit better. (Sorry, Jenna, that you had to be the guinea pig!)

Mike's younger brother was married last weekend. They had a fall theme and asked that their cake reflect it with some fall-colored leaves. It was such a delicious cake, I do not mind saying. It was caramel apple cake with a cinnamon buttercream. Oh my! We were all picking at the leftovers the next day.

Here it is!!

Harvest Monday!!

2010-11-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

I actually have a harvest for today. Granted it's like the smallest harvest in all of history, but a harvest nonetheless.

There are 4 eggplants from the plant that came up by itself in late July. While everything else was dying or struggling severely, this eggplant plant couldn't be stopped. Of course, we don't like eggplant here too much so it stinks that it was really the only thing doing anything. These eggplants actually went straight to the chickens. They were appreciative.

The big news is that tiny little tomato. It's the first of the fall tomatoes to be ripe. I don't think any others are even close to being ready yet, so this was special to me. It was the most delicious little tomato I've ever had. Hands down my favorite cherry tomato so far. It was very sweet but without losing that tomato flavor that I love. The package said it was an Isis Candy tomato, but it doesn't look too much like the pictures I've seen so far and a large amount of the seeds I've gotten from this person have not been what they were supposed to be. I'll save the seeds either way because this baby is a winner.

I actually had to buy a couple dozen eggs yesterday. It was the first time I've had to buy eggs since April. I have my brother-in-law's wedding cake to make this week and it's the largest cake I've made to date. Mike took two dozen eggs with him camping last weekend so we ended up a little short. Anyway, it was so interesting to me to compare our girls' eggs with the store bought ones. When they first started laying, their eggs were so tiny and cute. Now Blondie's eggs are humongous! They barely fit in a regular egg carton.

Here's a picture to compare. Blondie's egg is on the left and the store bought is on the right. Now I must tell you that this Blondie egg was on the small side for her, but it's still bigger than the store bought egg!

The Franks' eggs are about the same size as the store bought eggs. Maybe a touch smaller. They are prettier though for sure.

We are actually getting rid of our chickens though pretty soon. It was great having them and learning how to care for them. We now know that if we ever needed to have chickens for whatever reason, we would know how to raise them. Having those kind of skills, I feel, is important. But in all honesty, those suckers are loud in the morning. Definitely not ideal for our living situation at the moment. Mike's aunt, who just got a few pullets herself, will be taking them for us. They will have a very good life living on their land with all of their goats, horses and emu.

Head on over to Daphne's Dandelions to see more Harvest Monday blog posts.

The Little Things Thursday

2010-10-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the week again. The day where I focus on the good things in my life so I can redirect my thoughts away from negativity and complaining.

I'm sorry this is so late in the day. I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off all day and was just reminded by a friend that it was Thursday and she was anxiously awaiting this post. You're great Trace!!

My little things for this week...

- Having a daughter who loves to be in the kitchen with me. We spent yesterday decorating sugar cookies together.

- Having a son who is so willing to jump in and help when things get hectic. He just sat down and filled 18 treat bags for Bella's class party tomorrow for me. What a blessing he is to me!

- Meeting my husband for lunch today at Chick-Fil-A. He doesn't even really like that place but knows how much I do. He chose it to make me happy.

-Onion rings. That simple. I just love them.

Do you have any Little Things that made your week this week?

The Little Things Thursday!!

2010-10-21T13:42:00.001-07:00

I'm realizing that I am a complainer. I may not complain outwardly all that much but inside I do it quite often. There's lots of mopey, self-pity that's been going on in my head as of late. I decided that I don't like it. Not one bit. And I aim to change it.

I am going to start looking at the little things that do make me happy or proud or thankful and focus more on those things rather than what might not be ideal in my life at that time. I am hereby starting "The Little Things Thursday" Every Thursday, I am going to blog about the things that I am thankful for; the positive stuff that makes me feel good. I also invite everyone out there to join me. Instead of dwelling on negative things, show me the little things that made your day or your week. I truly believe that in changing our mindset, even for one day a week, we can begin to see the positivity in the rest of our lives.

My little things today:

-The weather is absolutely gorgeous! We actually needed jackets this morning. I've got the air conditioner turned off and the windows open. Beautiful!

-The bees are back in the garden (!!) and because of their help, there are tiny tomatoes forming on the plants.

-With my husband back at work this week, I've found plenty of time to have "me time". Time to think, read, even nap! It's done wonders to relax my mind and body.

-Last night I slept in freshly washed sheets on the bed. There's nothing better than climbing into bed at the end of a long day and feeling crisp, clean bedding all around you. I'm almost tempted to wash the bedding more than once a week so I can feel it more often. The keyword there is almost.

-In a few minutes I get to go pick up my kids from school. Ash had a field trip today so I'm very excited to hear all about it.

So, what are the little things that made you happy this week? Blog about it and then comment here so I can check it out. I promise, it'll make you feel good to focus on those little things. I know I feel better already!

Hello There, Kitty

2010-10-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a little cake I made today for our neighbor's little girl. I love Hello Kitty. There's something so sweet and charming about that simple kitty. I've only ever made one other Hello Kitty cake but, Bella has been telling me for months now that she wants her birthday cake to be Hello Kitty themed as well so hopefully there will be more!

This is a pretty simple cake to match the party invitations. It was really fun for me to make.

I do have a good excuse, I swear!

2010-10-09T11:45:00.001-07:00

I know it's been a month since the last time I blogged but I have an excuse. It's been the most stressful month and half that I can ever remember having. I'm just so grateful that we can finally see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

Thankfully, we finally had our last 100+ degree day last Saturday. Since then, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous and my garden is getting the attention that it deserves. Unfortunately, we had record highs after I planted most of my vegetables, which killed practically everything. Here are some pictures of what's left. It actually seems to be responding really well to the cooler temperatures already.

Here are two tomato plants that survived. The one on the left is starting to grow out of the heat stress it was showing. I'm hoping it'll be okay. The one on the right is flowering and looks pretty good, all things considered.

This is my pepper bed. The jalapenos are still in there from the spring. They are just beginning to set fruit again. The bare spots in the bed have some newly planted lettuce.

This is the view of the raised beds looking back. There are a few of my potted tomato plants. The two in white pots are Celebrity tomatoes. I bought 10 plants and put the other 8 in the ground after I lost most of my own grown tomato plants. Then it got super hot and all but the two in pots died. Grrr.

The cucumbers I planted at the end of July met a terrible end. I was doing really good at keeping them watered during the heat and then came the aphids. Stupid aphids. They ended up killing my cucumbers and 6 zucchini plants. I tried just about everything to get rid of them. I did see one ladybug once but that was it. She didn't want to stay I guess. So I finally replanted everything last week. The new cucumbers are just popping up. In this bed I also planted carrots, onions, and swiss chard. Plus there's a volunteer eggplant that's kicking butt and taking names. Really the only thing in my garden that's producing well right now.

Here it is! The seedling came up about 2 months ago and while everything else died in that bed, the eggplant kept on truckin'.

This is a depressing post! Geez. Well here's another failure while I'm at it. My cute little beans were my pride and joy. They were all lined up like sweet baby soldiers in their neat rows. And now this is all that's left of them. They cooked. I don't think beans like me very much. I try so hard to grow them and they hardly do well at all. I replanted one last time and then I'm giving up.

I do have my first tomato growing at long last.

It's an Isis Candy tomato and I was really surprised to find it.

Also, I have a confession. I bought some heirloom tomatoes yesterday. Safeway had them for only $1.99/pound and these two tomatoes looked so beautiful I couldn't resist.

Aren't they gorgeous!!! I contacted the farm that grew them and asked what kind they were. They said the orangey one was Marvel Stripe but didn't answer what the green one was. I'm guessing it's Berkeley Tie-Dye but I could be very wrong. Either way I'm saving the seed from both of them to grow myself next year. Fun!

I'll end with a cake I made last week. It was for our youth pastor who was celebrating both her 30th birthday and her 10 year anniversary as a youth pastor.

All in a morning

2010-09-14T11:51:00.001-07:00

What a morning!

I gotta be honest, I'm liking the chickens less and less lately. They wake me up every morning at 6:15. Too early. They make noise until I come out and get them some fresh water and let them run around for a minute or two. The thing is, it seems I'm the only one in this house who wakes up to their noise and I definitely can't get back to sleep once they wake me. So every morning, I get out of bed, bitterly, and go outside to get them what they need.

I brought the kids to school this morning as usual and then I figured I'd stop at Safeway on my way home to grab some freebies and other great deals since today is the last day of the sale. As I'm checking out, Mike calls my cell phone to tell me that one of the kids left their lunch in the kitchen. So I ask him to pack it up and I can get it and bring it to school. The cashier was brand new. My order ended up taking 18 minutes to complete. I was patient, of course. The people behind me, not so much.

I get home, grab Ash's lunch and head back out to the school so that my oldest won't starve all day. That would be horrible.

Back at home again, I start on the cake order for the day. It's a simple design so I'm not stressed about it. I made the flower yesterday to give it time to dry. As I'm icing the cake, the school calls. Ash forgot his glasses and is getting a headache. They give him some tylenol for the headache and send him back to class. He'll need to remember the glasses for tomorrow. Inside, I'm breathing a sigh of relief that I don't have to drive all the way to and from the school again.

I got a new Christmas movie yesterday. Christmas in Connecticut. I put it in and watch from the kitchen while I finish the cake. Cute movie. Not very festive at all but it was still good.

Cake's done!

Now the kitchen is clean and reorganized. I swept and mopped all the floors. I have an apple cinnamon candle burning and another Christmas movie playing.

Absolutely cozy!

Funnel Cake!!!!

2010-09-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

It's been just under a month since I last posted. Please accept my deepest apologies. There's just been a lot of stuff going on this past month that kept my mind far from the idea of blogging.

But today is different!!

Earlier today my sister-in-law had mentioned on facebook that they were headed to the fair. I asked her to eat a funnel cake for me since it had been years since I've gotten to eat one. Probably since I was a kid. I love funnel cakes so very much. My mind couldn't let go of the thought of them all day so I figured I had better just do something about it! Off to the cookbook shelf!

One of the very first gifts Mike got me when we were first married was this cookbook

It was a kind of strange first gift I suppose, but I was excited. I was obsessed with cooking shows and was constantly wanting to be in the kitchen baking. This cookbook has a ton of awesome bread recipes plus bunches of other tasty treats. One recipe happens to be for funnel cakes.

So today, I brought this cookbook out and Bella and I had a project.

First the ingredients.

Bella mixed the eggs, milk and vanilla in a large batter bowl (makes it easier for pouring later on)

You want to heat about an inch and a half of oil in a skillet to about 350.

Then you want to sift the dry ingredients over your wet ingredients.

>Tangent Alert< Wanna see one of my favorite kitchen tools? (Please don't mind my chipped nailpolish. I pick at my nails when I'm bored. Terrible habit, I know.)

It's a measuring spoon. It has two ends. One is tablespoons and the other is teaspoons. That's one reason why it's cool. Here's the reason it's awesome!

It's flexible and reverses to the half measurement of each side! So it's actually 4 measuring spoons in one. It's so great. I don't know what I did before it came into my baking life.

Anyway, mix the batter until it's nice and smooth. You want it to be the consistency of waffle batter this means depending on the weather, you may need to add more milk or more flour. I had to add a bit more milk this time.

Now, remember that oil you've been heating? 350 degrees, right? Good. There are several ways to get the batter into the oil I'm sure. I made the first one by actually using a funnel, but it was kind of messy and was pretty difficult to work with it. So then I just did a slow stream from the batter bowl spout. Hold your spout up higher for thinner streaks, closer for thicker streaks. You want to go around in circles and back and forth around the pan. Make any design you want, just get some batter cooking.
(That's me using the funnel method. Picture taken by Bella.)

Fry until it's golden brown on the bottom and flip it.

Mmmm. Golden brown and delicious.

Once the other side is cooked, remove it from the oil and let it drain on some paper toweling. Let it cool for a minute or two and then set it on a plate.

Cover with sifted powdered sugar or you could also do cinnamon sugar. I went all traditional baby! Dig in!

It really didn't take long for that one to disappear.

No worries. There's plenty of batter left. I got about 7 funnel cakes out of one recipe.

Would you like the recipe so you too can bring the taste of carnivals home?

Here you go then!

Funnel Cakes

3 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Vegetable oil for frying
Powdered Sugar or Cinnamon Sugar for topping.

Combine eggs, milk and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat until well blended. Put flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a sifter. Sift over wet ingredients. Stir to mix until smooth. Add more milk or more flour if necessary. It should be the same consistency as waffle batter.

Add oil to a skillet and heat to 350 degrees. Carefully pour batter into the hot oil in a swirling or criss cross pattern to form the funnel cake. Fry until golden brown and crisp. Turn once. Remove to a paper towel to drain. Serve covered with powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar. Enjoy!

Getting the fall garden going

2010-08-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

Even though it's still very melty outside, I've begun getting my fall garden ready. My fall garden isn't really much different than my spring garden. It'll pretty much just be tomatoes, peppers, squashes, carrots, beans, cucumbers, onions, peas, lettuce and some herbs. Pretty basic and not very adventurous I know, but this is stuff that I know we'll eat.

Planting tomatoes for fall can be tricky here. The timing has got to be perfect. It takes longer for tomatoes to ripen in the colder months and if we get a frost(which we never really did last year), it can kill the plants. On the other hand, the extreme heat will kill the small plants as well. I've lost many so far, but I have plenty of back-ups so I just keep replanting and praying for cooler weather to get here soon. We're still getting temperatures of 110 degrees, but I know the cooler weather is right around the corner.

The tomatoes that I planted in the bags are doing really well. They are shade for most of the day so they don't croak, They're growing. Slowly but surely. Soon I will start moving them away from the house a little bit at a time so they can get the full sun they need. I do already see some buds on the cherry types but I'm thinking I should pinch those off and let them keep working on getting bigger.

The other tomato pictures are very underwhelming but I'm going to post them anyway for reference as time goes by.

I planted less plants in this bed than I did in the spring. I definitely learned my lesson about spacing. Ooops, I see a dead little plant in the front there. That was Cherokee Purple and I don't think I have any more of that one. Sad. Oh well. There's always next year.

These are my Brandywines. It's the only kind that I planted 3 of. Most of the others I only planted one plant each.

Here are my other potato leaf plants. There's Yellow Brandywine, Stump of the World, and Missouri Pink Love Apple. I love the names they give to heirloom tomatoes.

Kiss kiss. Smooch smooch. Do well little plants!

The bed of beans and cucumbers I planted is growing. Well, actually, surprise to none of us, I'm sure, Liberty dug it up the day after I planted those seeds. I cried and pouted and then planted some new seeds. Those seeds are now growing and doing well.

My planting calendar says that I can plant carrots at the beginning of September. I like to walk on the wild side, so I planted some yesterday. If they don't make it, no biggie. I used Granny's seed mat idea to only use as many seeds as I needed so there will be very little waste should they die. I also made mats for my lettuces but I won't plant them until September.

Alright well I've got some cleaning to do. With the kids at school all day, cleaning is so nice. It actually stays clean! It's a miracle.

There they go, leaving their mother.

2010-08-05T11:13:00.001-07:00

I'm alone right now. Completely alone. Well, besides the dog and the chickens. It's eerily quiet without babies running around and playing together and fighting together. No tattling. No snack requests. No snuggling.

Oh this is hard.

My babies began school today. Ash looked like such a big kid in his uniform and book bag next to his little sister this morning.

They must have been excited. Mike's alarm went off at 6am so he could call his work. As soon as he went outside, I heard Bella jump out of bed and run to Ash's room where she hollered "Wake up Ash! Wake up!! We have to go to school." They both got dressed, made their own breakfast, and packed up their lunch all in about 12 minutes. Bella then made her way into my room, where I was still sleeping, and asked me to curl her hair for her. I told her it was still way too early and to go back to bed.

I don't think she did.

Eventually I woke up and got myself ready and then repacked their lunches for them (they tried to get away with 2 fruit snacks each. Ha!) Once we were all ready, I whipped out the camera and started snapping. My sweet babies!!

Daddy and Ash

Ash and Bella by the playground.

He was definitely getting a little tired of all the picture taking.

Ash waiting in line with the rest of his class

Ash at his new desk in the 4th grade. I totally embarrassed him here. I really didn't mean to. I just wanted to kiss him goodbye. I guess that's a no-no when you're in the 4th grade.

We had decided to stay a little while in Bella's class, probably more for us than for Bella. It's difficult to let go of her. Last night I realized that this will be my last first day of kindergarten and I got a little weepy. She's my sweet angel baby and I'm having a hard time letting her grow up.

Bella shares a cubby with this sweet little girl. I'm sure they'll be great friends!

The class sat around their teacher to listen to a story before taking a walking tour of the school so they would learn where the bathrooms and office and lunchroom were.

I'm sure she'll be fine.

I'm going to pick them up in 3 hours and I truly can't wait to see their little faces and hear all the stories they're sure to have for me.

Welcome to the next stage of my life.

I Can't Get The "Umph"

2010-08-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time getting the motivation to blog much. There's so much going on that would be good to write about but there's not much time or energy left to do the writing.

This Thursday will be the first day of school for my kids and the first day without children at home for me. I'm so nervous but kind of excited. What will I do? I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of cleaning since I'll be so bored. I'm thinking of getting a job part-time, which would be incredibly helpful financially and would probably be good for me. I just don't know where yet. Going to school, myself, would be ideal, but doesn't seem likely.

Enough of that.

Here are some cakes I made lately.

That was random.

I've begun selling the tomato plants and planting my own into my garden. So far I have 14 plants in. I'm doing it little by little because it's too hot and humid outside for me to be out for more than 30 minutes at a time. I still have to prepare the soil. So I've basically been doing it 3 plants at a time. This morning I turned the compost, sifted a huge bucket full and mixed it into the ground where I was planting. I was pouring sweat. It was mighty gross.

Don't mind that stupid yellow hose in the picture. One day I will get a more sophisticated watering system set up. For now I have those super ugly yellow hoses. I got those grow bags from Amazon a few months ago. They were something like $10 for 3 of them. They hold much more soil than the Topsy Turvy grow bags so I bought 2 sets and I'm testing them to see how they'll do. I've always been tempted to buy the Topsy Turvy. I couldn't really tell you why besides it has to do with growing tomatoes. I mean logically, it's not the best idea. It doesn't hold near enough soil for a tomato plant in my opinion and would more than likely cook a plant out where I live. I'm really interested to see how these bags do.

Alright, that's all I've got. Tootles!

Garden Update

2010-07-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. I said I was going to take July and August off from gardening but I couldn't help myself. Once I cleared out that back bed I had to plant something there. And I knew when I planted it that it wouldn't be done before July, so I'm still out there playing in the dirt. I think it very much helps that I don't have all of my beds growing right now. The area where the tomatoes were is empty right now and most of the 4 raised beds are also empty. I'm almost positive that if they were planted it would be way too intimidating of a job to keep it all watered in this 115 degree heat.

Here's that area that I cleared a couple of months ago and asked for suggestions on what to plant. It's not a huge area so it's pretty easy to keep it watered and not get overwhelmed by it.

In it, I have growing sugar baby watermelons, some sort of cantaloupe that I got seeds for from Wintersown.org, yardlong beans, Armenian cucumbers, straight neck squash and grey zucchini (which isn't doing very well for some reason). There's also a random zucchini plant that came up where the cantaloupes were planted. I don't remember planting that. I may have just dropped a seed there on accident.

The sugar baby watermelons always do really well for me. It's the larger watermelons that I have difficulty with. These ones are going nuts and have set 8 watermelons the last time I checked. I can't wait to taste them!

The yellow squash has just begun producing female blossoms. We did get the very first squash from this plant a few days ago and it has so many more growing. The grey zucchini is just pathetic. Every female blossom so far has not opened and the fruit just shrivels and dies. Very annoying. I'm going to give it a couple more weeks to get it's act together before I yank them out.

Yay! Here's the first Armenian cucumber. Its blossom opened this morning. Armenian cucumbers seem to take forever to get the first female blossom on the plant, but they grow very quickly and are really tasty.

The cantaloupes have also just begun setting fruit. There are only 3 out there so far but the vines are spreading all over the place and I'm sure we'll get more.

I kept my jalapeno plants in but they are doing horribly!

The peppers are all so small and really not worth much of anything. I really want some nice big stuff-able jalapenos. I'm thinking my soil must be missing something. I'm ever hopeful though. I don't want to pull them because what if they do better once the cooler weather comes?

The fall tomato seedlings are doing really well. They are all outside now. I did lose a few the first day but now they are hardened off and will finish growing in the actual sun. I'm so excited to try these kinds!

Yesterday, miracle of miracles, we didn't even reach 100 degrees! It was very overcast all day and so I thought I would work outside. Liberty tore up my eggplant bed a few weeks ago and so it sat, empty and sad. The box was only about halfway filled with soil. I topped it off with our finished compost and added some other amendments to it. This morning Bella and I planted seeds for 2 types of cucumbers and 3 types of bush beans in that bed. If all goes well, we should have cucumbers and beans by the end of September.

You can see the rest of the compost pile behind that bed. I really need to get it sifted to get the finished compost out today. We are starting a new pile tomorrow and I need that compost for when I plant my tomatoes.

Sweets and Treats

2010-07-20T20:01:00.001-07:00

Just some pictures of the treats I made so far this week.

The first is a cake I did for my neighbor Kat. It was for a bridal shower and I tried to go off the invitation as best as I could. I thought it turned out cute. Kind of had a 50's malt-shop feel to me.

The other treats were for my sister-in-law. She asked for tuxedo dipped strawberries and my yummy cake truffles. Done and done!

I have one more cake for the week and then a week off. I have some garden posts that I need to get up soon, so I may try to do that tomorrow. Later!

Making Spaghetti Sauce With Bella Mae

2010-07-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

It's 189 degrees outside. What better activity for the day than standing in front of a hot stove making spaghetti sauce? I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess.

Bella really wanted to help me and she did. She was actually a huge help. She washed the tomatoes and scooped out all of the gel and seeds from the middle. While I was doing the hot stuff, I told her she could be my photographer. The first 2 and the last 2 pictures I took. The rest was Bella practicing her photography skills, and taking her job oh-so seriously.

Onward!

15 pounds of tomatoes

I just used the packaged spaghetti sauce seasoning. I'm lazy

There's the back of me peeling tomato skins off. I also see an empty Diet Coke bottle. That's nice

Hmmm. My hairy arm and some tomatoes waiting to be blanched so their skins will come off easier

She's doing a great job so far. Here's one colander full of peeled tomatoes

Okay, the counter is pretty cluttered but here are some tomatoes cut in half to get the cores and seeds out.

I see she's starting to get distracted

Yep, pretty distracted. That's a magnet she made in church. Oh look! Some Burger King coupons. Classy

uhhh, that's a picture she drew of me and her holding hands. I'm thinking she forgot about the tomatoes.

Sweet baby feet. She definitely forgot

"Weren't you supposed to be taking pictures of spaghetti sauce?"

She completely lost all interest in her project and gave my camera back. Here's the sauce cooking down.

I bagged it up in several quart size bags and froze it instead of canning it. Tonight's dinner: Spaghetti and Meatballs!!

What fun. Thanks for the help Belly!!

Dora Cake

2010-07-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

This will just be a quick post. I wanted to show the cake I made this weekend. It's not fantastic by any means, but it's not horrible either.

This was for my good friend Tracy's little girl Abigail. She turned 3 this week. Her parents decided on a Dora cake for her. I didn't know that it was supposed to be a surprise. She was visiting on the 4th of July and I told her that I was going to make her a Dora cake. She got so excited and said "Oh thank you!!" Then Tracy told me it was a surprise and I felt bad. Woops. Sorry Trace!

So here it is. Simple chocolate cake, vanilla icing. Dora is made out of chocolate and the bow and flowers are fondant.

Just call us the chicken whisperers

2010-07-05T15:44:00.001-07:00

I feel positively horrible and amazing at the same time. Late Thursday afternoon I found two more chickens dead in their chicken coop and another one on the verge of death. The one that was still alive was in the nest boxes and the other 2 were cuddled together in the corner by the nest boxes. We have 3 nest boxes but all of the chickens prefer one particular box so they will wait their turn for a chance to lay their egg each day. It looked to me like the 2 that had died were waiting their turn and the heat was just too much in the coop.

I brought them some water and the one still alive barely hobbled out of the coop but couldn't drink it and really couldn't walk either. She flopped to her side with her mouth hanging open and attempted rolling over but just didn't have the strength. Mike was home that day and came out to help. He climbed into the run with Frank and began slowly pouring water into her open beak and misting her body with water to bring her temperature down. He worked on her for a while even though it looked like there was no way she was going to make it.

We decided to bring her inside the house so she could rest in the cool air. We still have Liberty's old kennel which was the perfect size for Frank. She laid down inside with our help and we each took turns sitting by her and petting her and dipping her beak into the bowl of water to help her to drink. She still wasn't eating though and was sleeping a lot.

Liberty was really quite distressed. She laid down next to the cage and whimpered.

We waited patiently, expecting that she would die at any moment. By nightfall she still wasn't able to stand or eat and only drank when we helped her. We decided that she should spend the night inside and hoped for the best by the next morning.

I woke up the next day completely terrified to walk into the living room, not wanting to find yet another dead chicken (I'm sorry, but they look extremely scary when they die. I'll leave it at that) Instead I found Frank in much the same position as when we left her. She was breathing and drinking but still really sleepy. I know that chickens are social creatures so I picked her up and brought her out to be with the two remaining chickens. I sprayed her with hose and brought out some frozen water bottles which she plopped herself right on top of and fell back to sleep.

After 2 more days of sleeping and drinking and sitting on ice, I'm very happy to report that Frank has her appetite back. She's eating again and drinking all on her own. This morning when I came to fill up their water, all 3 happy chickens ran out to meet me and follow me around the yard. Frank even began laying eggs again.

So we are down to 3 chickens. The dearly departed have been laid to rest. The coop has been ventilated more so we don't have a repeat of The Great Chicken Depression, as Ash has coined it, and a fan now resides amongst our strong three. May they remain strong and live long, healthy chicken lives. And may PETA go easy on me for getting 5 chickens killed now. Amen.

It's a Forest!!

2010-06-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

A tomato seedling forest!

Cute little sweethearts. Mike was worried about them being in the garage because of the heat but I think it will be good for them. It will probably help with hardening them off as well since they'll already be used to the heat. I guess time will tell. I'm going to try to sell the extras (and there will be plenty of extras). They sold really well in the spring. I'll be interested to see how they do for the fall.

Made A Cake

2010-06-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Most cake orders I get are for Saturdays. This cake was for today, Monday. Totally threw me off. I really like to have a cake finished and the chaos from decorating it cleaned up by early the day it's due. That way I can relax and not stress about deadlines. That's not the way this one happened. I didn't get started until last night and then couldn't get my icing right so it took a while to actually begin decorating. I was up late and got up early to be able to finish on time. I enlisted the help of the children in cleaning up my mess. (Ash will do just about anything to earn video game time.) But in the end it was complete and I think it's alright.

They asked for a Mickey Mouse themed cake. I found a design online that someone else did and changed it up a little bit. The Mickey Mouse ears topper is made of styrofoam and covered in fondant. I hope they like it!

Jam Making Time!

2010-06-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

I'm really quite domestic at heart and long to be more like my grandmothers and their grandmothers and so-on. It's a romantic thought to me to have the husband work and come home to a clean house and a wife who's been working hard in the kitchen canning up food for them to use in the coming year. Of course it's not always realistic, but it doesn't change how I feel about it. I so want to be that woman!!

I did some jam-making today to feed my inner 40's housewife urges and I gotta say, those ladies did not have it easy! I can't imagine making and canning enough food to get a family through the winter months when nothing would be growing in their garden. I know there are many, many families who still do this today and are quite proficient at it. I'm definitely not there yet, but I'd still like to be. I'm not giving up.

I read up a lot this past week on jam-making and canning. I mean, I did it a couple of times last year but not enough to really know what I'm doing. I chose a triple berry jam recipe that included strawberries, raspberries and black berries.

I had to smash up the berries and press both the raspberries and blackberries through my wire sieve to get the seeds out. I'm not a big seed fan so although it was tedious, totally worth it!

After measuring the crushed fruit it all got poured in a saucepan to be mixed with the other ingredients.

I used the lower sugar recipe pectin obviously so I didn't have to add as much sugar but as you can see, it still used a lot of sugar.

Now here's a big lesson I learned. See this?

Once you add the sugar it becomes this

and it has yet to come to a boil. Do you see where I'm going with this? I'd love to show you a picture but once the boil over happened, I was too busy panicking and calling for my husband's help. I was pretty sure I ruined our stove, but hey, I really liked the smell of the burnt sugar. So... that was positive.

Okay so eventually I did get the burnt jam cleaned off of the stove and the jars filled. They were processed for 10 minutes

and then ta-da!! Triple Berry Jam for my children to enjoy for many months to come.

So was it worth it? Gosh I sure hope so!! It was a lot of work but I'm sure it will get easier and faster the more I try. And I do plan on trying lots more before the summer is over. Hopefully, my kitchen will survive my attempts.

Around the summertime yard

2010-06-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we reached 113 degrees here in the Valley of the Sun. It was brutal. It actually killed poor Gretchen our Rhode Island Red chicken. It was very heartbreaking. I went out to refill their water around 4 pm and she was just lying there in the coop lifeless. I've since covered their run with shade cloth and have been bringing them 2 liter bottles of frozen water for them to sit near. They seem to really like that so far. It's just miserable out there.

I'm amazed really that anything is able to grow and flourish in these temperatures. I told you all that I pulled pretty much all of our tomato plants. I left the black cherry, chocolate cherry, juliet and mama leone because they seem to still be doing alright. They're not producing too many new blossoms but they are still setting fruit and are still showing new growth. I actually cut out all of the old growth on the black cherry because near the base of the plant it was sending up new growth. I cut everything except that growth and will let that be the new plant. So far so good.

I was checking out the eggplants and noticed something nice.

The Praying Manti are back! I was just thinking yesterday how I hadn't seen them this year and figured they must have died or moved on to another yard. I really enjoy having these guys in my garden. They're very hard workers.

The eggplants are coming along nicely. They're all still pretty small but there are quite a few on each plant. I'm sure my kids are very excited about that. I have to hide eggplant in their food. They usually don't even know they're eating it, but when they do know it's there, they hardly give it a chance. I totally should have started them on more vegetables when they were babies. It's so difficult to have them try new things now that they're older and more stubborn.

The peppers are still doing their thing as well. The Golden California Wonders are finally growing little bell peppers. They pretty much sat there doing nothing for what seemed like forever.

Right next to them is Swiss Chard which is still doing amazingly well. I've been using the leaves in wraps for lunch and sauteed with garlic and onions to top homemade veggie pizzas. It's really good!

The other half of that bed has basil, parsley and jalapenos. I've cut both of the herbs all the way back a couple of times but they keep growing. The jalapenos have plenty of peppers but they're all pretty small. I hope they get bigger. My whole reason for growing them is for jalapeno poppers. To make it healthier though, I use low fat cream cheese and wrap them in turkey bacon. Then into the oven until the pepper is soft and the bacon is crisp. They are so addictive!!

There's been a lot of brave little seedlings popping up everywhere this year. I found this cantaloupe plant growing in the rocks and it even has a fruit on it! I won't tell it it's not supposed to grow in rocks. I'm all for encouraging the impossible.

And finally, I harvested the first 3 cucumbers this morning. I think I planted pickling cucumbers on accident because these guys never got very big. Now in the past, every time I've tried to grow cucumbers, they've always ended up bitter and I've been disappointed. I think it's just too dang hot here to grow good cucumbers. These ones I put under a shade cloth and watered them every day at the same time. I'm crossing my fingers that these will be good because I really want some cucumber in my salad today. I will report back because I'm sure everyone is waiting on the edge of their seats.

And they're off!

2010-06-24T15:11:00.000-07:00

Mike and I sat down on Monday and worked on sowing the fall tomatoes together. It was romantical. I do have a confession to make though. Remember my tomato list? Well, it might have grown by one or two or fourteen varieties. I couldn't help it!! They were all looking up at me as I was working and begging me to not ignore them. I'm just a big softy for those little guys so I let them join the party. If I play my cards right, and don't plant too much of other things, I should have room for at least one of each plant.

The next day I also planted the peppers. I'm sure the plants I have now will be just fine producing for the rest of the year but I really love a few of them and want more plants to really up the production. My favorites that I just had to grow more of were Quadrato Rosso D'Asti which grew absolute monster bell peppers and Corno di Toro Rosso which grew absolute monster frying peppers. I also added in some Marconi peppers just for fun.

So today I walked by the trays and what did I see?

They're sprouting already!! 3 days! It's amazing. I cleared off a shelf of our food storage shelving to set up the grow lights. I was kind of tired of having my bedroom closet as the grow station for so many months of the year. Plus I just got it all organized and beautiful after we painted. I'm thinking I'd like to keep it that way. Call me selfish, but there it is. So I had better get those lights up or these babies will start stretching looking for sunlight.

Date Night!!

2010-06-21T10:43:00.001-07:00

Mike and I try to do date nights a couple of times a month. I feel it's essential for a healthy marriage to get out and be together; to keep on courting each other, really. But life has gotten very busy and hectic and in the way over the past months and the last date we went on was in February I think. Shame, shame, shame.

Mike suggested, one day last week, that we go out on Saturday and asked me to call our sitter to see if she was available. To me, that was the most amazing thing because usually it's me who brings up dates, but this was my man's idea. Yay!! Date night here we come!

We wanted to just go out to dinner and also wanted to keep it local. We haven't been to most of the restaurants here in town and figured it's high time we tried some of them. I found a website that lets you see all the restaurants in town and then also gives reviews for them.

We settled on a place called The Mining Camp Restaurant. It's a cute little rustic restaurant on the way to Canyon Lake. It's right up against the Superstition Mountains where the legend of the Lost Dutchman takes place.

Please excuse the quality of the pictures. I was using my cell phone.

Those mountains amaze me. They are awesome, and not in the "that's so totally radical and awesome" way but the "they leave you in absolute awe that they exist" kind of way.

Inside the restaurant is filled with character and charm. You feel like you're in an old log cabin. The food is served family-style and you sit on long benches. The plates and cups are taken right out of a campsite (although Mike told me he only wished they got that fancy when they went camping)

We were served large helpings of chicken, ham and beef ribs along with sides of two kinds of homemade breads, coleslaw, baked beans, green beans and stuffing. The bread came with a little jar of "razzle berry jelly" which is made of prickly pear cactus along with other fruits.

I've never tried prickly pear cactus so I was a little hesitant, but I gotta say that jelly was quite tasty. It was much "zingier" than any kind I've ever tried for sure.

All in all, the food was ok. The chicken had great flavor but was a little dry. The ribs we make at home blew these ribs out of the water. Everything else though was delicious and the atmosphere was really fun and relaxed. It was a great date night spent with the man of my dreams.

Thinking and Planning

2010-06-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

In a couple of short weeks I will be starting the seeds for my fall garden. Of course the most important aspect of that garden to me will be the tomatoes. I have seeds for close to 100 varieties of tomatoes and I definitely don't have the room for all of them. I'm thinking that this round of plants will be all new varieties for me. There would just be no way possible for me to ever try all of the tomatoes I want if I keep planting only a few new ones each season. I need to make the leap.

Today I sat down with my seeds and whittled them down to 15. My gosh that was hard.

Here's what I'm thinking as of now. Keep in mind that this list is subject to change because I am very fickle.

Cherry Tomatoes

Isis Candy
Chadwick Cherry
Evan's Purple Pear
Sungold (I actually have tried this one but need to try it again since it didn't do very well)
Cherub

Slicing Tomatoes

JD's Special C-Tex
Stump of the World
Brandywine- Sudduth strain
Green Zebra (same story as the sungold)
Indian Stripe
Beauty King
Brad's Black Heart
Yellow Brandywine
Missouri Pink Love Apple
Arkansas Traveler

So Tomato People, what do you think? Any opinions? Suggestions? I'm a spazz about this stuff and could use all the help I can get.

Cakes

2010-06-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the disaster that is my room as we are in the middle of painting finally. All of our furniture is crammed in the middle of the room and that includes the computer desk. It's definitely a little awkward typing while standing up, wedged between a dresser and the keyboard.

I wanted show pictures of the cakes I made this weekend. The first one isn't really decorated. It's just a dessert cake really but it's what they asked for. I created a recipe a while back for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. It's my Pastor's favorite. He asked me if I could make one for his son's birthday last Friday. I added chopped peanut butter cups to the top because hey, what could it hurt?

It smelled luscious.

Then I also made a cake for my nephew Brayden. He had his third birthday party on Saturday and it was dinosaur themed. They asked me to make the cake and this is what I came up with. Brayden's favorite color is orange so it was really no surprise when I asked him what color I should make his dinosaurs. Orange it was.

That picture makes the top tier look slanted but it's an illusion from the outline of the waterfall. I swear it's perfectly straight!

I was supposed to do a princess castle cake this weekend but they had to cancel. I think my next cake is a Mickey Mouse cake (?) but I'm not sure. We shall see. Now my back is hurting from standing here so I'm gonna go.

Harvest Monday

2010-06-14T10:55:00.001-07:00

It's here once again. The day where we gardeners from around the globe show off the abundance of food that comes from the ground which we have tended.

My garden is trying to throw in the towel in surrender. The heat has been brutal and only the strong will survive it. The kids and I spent the morning a few days ago picking as many usable tomatoes from the plants and then pulling the plants up out of the ground. It was sweaty work. And a little sad. The cherries are still pumping out fruit so they all get to stay a little longer, but all of the slicing tomatoes are gone now.

We're still getting some good sized harvests. The zucchini, which stalled out a little last week, is now showing new very healthy growth with lots of baby zukes not far behind. I do have some new plants going as well, just to keep the supply going.

The peppers are really shining now.

This one is over 7 inches long! I thought that was huge. The biggest I've ever grown.

This is from this morning. I got the first eggplant which is much later than last year but I was dumb this year. I put the plants out too early and they were shaded by the peas for a while. They didn't really start growing until I pulled the peas down. Now they are doing great. I also cut back my basil plants a bunch so I'm going to have to google some pesto recipes I think.

Check out Daphne's Dandelions for more Harvest Mondays

And then there were 6

2010-06-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

It seems one of the Franks met an early end this morning.

In case you are not aware, the Franks are our 5 Barred Plymouth Rock chickens. They all have the same name (a male name at that) because we can't tell them apart. They are all named "Frank".

This morning around 6am the chickens started making a lot of noise. I smothered my ears with a pillow and kicked myself for just last night telling someone how they stopped being so noisy in the mornings. The noise went on for quite a while and by the time Mike got up for work he said to me that maybe they were just thirsty and hungry. So I got up and went out to feed and water the Churks.

When I got to the sliding glass door that leads outside, I saw Gretchen, our Rhode Island Red, just chilling on the patio.

"I guess that's why they were making so much noise, Mike. Gretchen's out of the coop." But I couldn't figure out how she got out. We fixed their door a few weeks back after Liberty tried busting through it several times and I didn't see any gaps for them to get out through.

I opened the door and let them all out to follow me around the yard while I got their water, but I only counted 5. There was one more in the nest boxes laying her morning egg so that made 6. I walked around the yard thinking she must have gotten out with Gretchen and was probably feasting in some part of the garden.

Nope.

Then I began to see piles of Frank feathers along with other evidence of chaos.

Frank is no more. I'm guessing a cat dug into the coop and caused a ruckus amongst the chickens. The door must have gotten pushed open and out went 2 chickens along with the cat. The cat chased after Frank and Gretchen was off the hook.

I never found a body (Thank you Lord!!) just piles and piles of pretty black and white striped feathers.

Farewell Frank. Sorry about not giving you your own name.

The sad part is this isn't even the "late" Frank. But really, they all look exactly alike

Spending time in the kitchen

2010-06-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

I feel like quite the happy homemaker today. Every now and again I crave being in the kitchen. It's like an instinctual urge that lures me in. I just need to bake and cook and create. I can try to fight it for a day or two but there's really no use in trying to ignore it forever.

The urge totally hit me yesterday.

Faced with the overflow of tomatoes I decided to try something today. I turned them into sun-dried tomatoes. Well actually oven-dried tomatoes.

They sure don't look like much but those little babies have a powerful punch of flavor that I can't wait to use in pastas and pizzas and just snacking. They were super easy to make too. I just cut my smaller tomatoes in half and layed them cut side up on a lined baking sheet. Then I drizzled them with some oil and seasoned with a little Italian Seasoning. I put them in a 225 oven and let them go until they were shriveled and small and leathery. It ended up taking around 5 hours.

I also made our own granola yesterday. I've wanted to try for a while but just never got around to it. Bella helped me mix the oats, wheat germ, sesame seeds, flax meal, slivered almonds and pecan pieces while I heated the oil, brown sugar, honey, molasses, cinnamon and vanilla. Once they were all combined it was spread on baking sheets and baked for about 40 minutes. The smell was heavenly. Once it was out and cooled, I mixed in some orange-cranberries.

The kids had it for breakfast as cereal with milk. I had some sprinkled over vanilla yogurt. Quite tasty and it made a lot. We filled 1 gallon sized ziplock bag all the way and 1 sandwich sized ziplock. We have breakfast covered for a while.

Also, I had to do something with eggs. We have so many and I needed something that would use a lot. I went with a scratch angel food cake. I've never made one from scratch. I've always heard they were difficult to make, but I figured the worst that could happen is I would waste the eggs. I'm okay with that. It used up 13 egg whites for the cake. That's a go.

I was totally successful!! It really wasn't hard at all to make. You just need to take your time and not rush anything. Also following directions very carefully helps. So 13 eggs later, we have dessert.

Now if only my strawberry plants were successful this year we'd be in great shape.

Let's catch up with harvest pictures

2010-06-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've made a decision. Come July and August, I'm letting the garden go. I've decided it just takes too much water and effort to grow things here in the heat of summer and it hasn't been worth the cost of water in my past experiences. So, this will be the last month I'll be working in the garden until September. I'm at peace with this.

Also, I've come to the conclusion that having a limited tomato harvesting time is not a bad thing. Let me show you why.

That's what I picked from the tomato plants this week. And I left a ton still on the vines because they're starting to get overwhelming. I can't imagine having this many tomatoes everyday for the next 2 months or so. But then again, maybe that's why so many people thought I was nuts for planting as many tomato plants as I did. It's a bittersweet thing that my season is coming to an end.

In that last picture you can also see I picked a few peppers. I am so proud of my peppers so far this year. They are HUGE!! I had to thin the plants because they were getting so heavy and toppling over. I think I'll make fajitas tonight with these ones.

I spent yesterday processing pumpkins and winter squashes so I have pumpkin puree for at least the rest of the year. It felt very strange cutting up pumpkins in June, I gotta say. I guess it kind of helped that these weren't the typical orange pumpkins.

Epic Potato Harvest

2010-05-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

Are you jealous?

I emptied one of the potato buckets and that's all I found. Actually I found a lot of bugs too which was so unbelievably gross to have to dig through I can't even begin to tell you. I'm a little squeamish. The largest potato there is probably the size of a golf ball. Lord help us if we ever have to actually grow all of our own food. Zucchini, swiss chard and sunflower seeds will be the only things on our menus!

This morning I got up and worked on clearing out the corn stalks and the finished winter squash plants. It was some seriously sweaty work, but it felt good. I've still got to chop the stalks up and mix them into the compost pile which should be a pretty good workout. So now I've got some open space.

Well, besides that random pepper plant. Towards the end of my spring planting I was just throwing extra plants wherever I could.

This space is about 14 feet long and 3 feet wide. I can totally still plant things there but they need to be extremely heat tolerant. From the guide I have, it looks like my options are Yardlong Beans, Blackeye Peas, Armenian Cucumbers, Cantaloupes, Jicama, Okra, Peppers, Squash, Sunflowers, Tomatillos, Sweet Potatoes and Watermelons.

That's quite a list! I have seeds for most of those so I'm going to get the soil ready and think about which ones I'll grow. I really do love the planning stage of gardening. So many possibilities,

Squash Rolls

2010-05-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

So delicious!!

The other day I was saying how I didn't exactly know what to do with my buttercup squash. Kat posted a link to a recipe she found and suggested I try them. I am so glad she did because this will now be my go-to dinner roll recipe. They are so good. The dough is an absolute dream to work with. It's not sticky. It's just beautiful and smooth and perfect. The rolls turned out so light with the exact flavor I look for in a yeast roll. You cannot taste any squash in the rolls. Really. Don't be afraid. On the other hand, do be afraid that you will eat an entire pan. I almost did. Bad, Hannah!

Seriously, try these.

Oh and if you don't know how to get the squash puree here you go. Super simple. Take a buttercup squash (or acorn), cut it in half and scoop out the pulp and seeds. (I was amazed at how the buttercup smelled when cut open. It smelled like a cantaloupe.) Turn your oven on to 350. Put your squash halves cut side down on a baking sheet and cook until they are soft, about 30-40 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let cool. Scoop out the flesh and mash it up. From one buttercup squash you will have enough puree for at least a double recipe of rolls. But you can freeze what you have left and make these rolls another time.

Okay, the recipe.

Grammy Heino's Squash Rolls

1/2 cup pureed buttercup or acorn squash
1/2 cup lukewarm water
2 pkgs. active dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
5 to 6 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup lukewarm milk
1/2 cup soft butter
2 Tbsp melted butter

In a small bowl add the yeast and a pinch of the sugar to the 1/2 cup lukewarm water. Allow it to rest for 2 to 3 minutes, then mix well. Set in a warm draft free place for about 10 minutes or until the yeast bubbles up and the mixture almost doubles in volume.

In a deep mixing bowl combine 5 cups of flour, the remaining sugar and salt. Sift together and make a well in the middle. Pour in the yeast mixture, add the squash puree, the milk and 1/2 cup of softened butter. With a large wooden spoon gradually mix everything together (I used my stand mixer and it was fine and much easier than doing it by hand) Continue to beat until the dough is smooth and can be formed into a compact ball. Place the ball on a lightly floured surface and knead, incorporating up to 1 cup more of flour, until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticky.

Butter the inside of a large bowl. Set the dough inside the bowl and turn it upside down so the whole thing is coated in butter.. Drape a towel over the bowl and put it in a draft free place to rise about 1 hour until doubled in size.

Butter the bottom of two 9 inch cake pans (I needed 2 9-inch pans and one 8 inch pan)
Punch the dough down and on a lightly floured surface roll out the dough in a rectangle about 1 inch thick. With a cookie cutter or the rim of a glass cut the dough into 2 1/2 inch rounds. Fold the rounds in half and tuck the ends underneath. Place the rolls in the pans about1/2 inch apart and brush the tops with melted butter. Set the pans to rise for about 15 minutes.
Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.
It says to serve piping hot but I just ate another one for breakfast and they are still just as tasty.

These ones are shaped like the directions say to shape them.

These ones are just formed like regular dinner rolls.

Both ways work one just looks "fancier".

Show of hands, who's going to try these?

Summer is here

2010-05-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

It's the first official day of summer break for my son. In a few short months both of my children will be in school. I'm totally getting a little bit of anxiety over that fact. How is it possible that my babies aren't babies anymore? I keep begging Mike for one more baby but he's not budging. I'm not sure what I'll do next year. Will I be working? Will I just be home cleaning an empty house and baking cookies for when my kids get home? I guess we'll see.

I woke up this morning to fighting. Ugh. I'm really hoping it's not like that every morning this summer. It's a power struggle really. Ash is the oldest and so he feels like he has the right to tell Bella what to do. Bella is not used to having to share her day with anyone but me and doesn't want her brother barging in on what she's got going. I firmly reminded them that I am the parent and that neither of them had the right to tell the other what to do. Then I made them say they were sorry and give the each other a hug. Now they are playing in Bella's room and won't let the dog join in.

Poor dog.

I'm going to leave you all with a picture. Remember how I said my sunflowers were super tall? Well I've been curious as to how it looks from the other side of our back wall. We have an a road behind our house and I wondered what it looked like for people driving by. I took my camera and drove around to the back. Here's what I saw.

I hate that tree. It's evil. It drops seeds all over my garden and sprouts mini evil trees that are the dickens to pull out. But aren't the sunflowers pretty?

Harvest Monday!!

2010-05-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

It's getting pretty warm here. We've had our first 100 degree day and I am dreading the days of 115 and higher that we're sure to suffer through in the coming months. More and more I'm liking the idea of just picking up and moving to another state. But we're here for now and I'm going to have to just deal with it.

So I'm thinking either I wasn't watering my tomatoes enough or I overfertalized them. Maybe a combination of both. It came on very suddenly about 2 weeks ago when my plants just turned brown over a period of 2 days. The stems are still nice and green but the leaves were almost completely dead. I've been babying them with some fish emulsion diluted in plenty of water and it really seems to have helped. There's some good new green growth on the tops and coming out of the lower branches. I sure hope they'll last at least a couple of months longer. I get so envious of other parts of the country that although they have to wait longer to put their plants out, once their tomatoes start ripening, the plants keep going for months until they're killed by frost. It seems like for me, my plants grow and produce tomatoes but only that first batch will ripen before my plants get killed by me or the extreme heat. I just want to be a good gardener for Pete's sake!!

Okay, sorry for my pity party. I'm done. For now.

On with the pictures!!

Two of the buttercup squashes were ready. I'm not exactly sure what to do with them. I guess I need to google some recipes. Usually I just cook my winter squashes and use them in place of pumpkin for making pumpkin bread, and pie and cookies. Not sure if I can do that with buttercup squash. I also pulled a few more onions. We've been using these all week and they are really great! Not too strong at all. We've even had them raw on hoagies.

I made a note of when the first silks appeared on the corn stalks and figured they would be ready to harvest on the 24th (today!!) but I checked one on Saturday and it was perfect. So this is the first ear of corn from our garden this year. I showed it to the fam and then dropped it in some boiling water, slathered it with butter, salt and pepper and ate it up. Oh wow! Absolutely delish.

Here was our first large tomato from the garden. It's a Cherokee Purple. We sliced it up and had it on our hoagies along with some of that onion. I loved it! Mike didn't think it was too special but he's not a big tomato person.

We've got some blushers!! Here's the tomato haul from this morning. I pull them when they first start to blush because we have some evil birds who live in the evil trees who like to do evil things like peck huge holes in ripe tomatoes. This way the tomatoes will ripen on my counter and my family and I will be the ones to devour them.

I pulled out the yellow squash plants and one of the lemon squash plants. They seemed to not be doing as well lately. I amended the soil and started some new seeds. Gotta keep the harvest coming!

I won't show the eggs. We are getting insane amounts of eggs. Luckily we gave away around 4 dozen yesterday so my fridge is no longer packed with them. That's happy news.

As always check out Daphne's Dandelions to check out other Harvest Monday pictures.

Girly Cake

2010-05-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

I really like today's cake. Actually I love it. I began last night not knowing in the slightest what I was going to do with it.

There's kind of a funny background story with the customer.

Mike met our neighbors, Joe and Kat, a few months back. I don't know how it happened but he showed them my blog. Actually I do know how it happened, Mike shows everyone my blog. He's cute that way. These neighbor's are AWESOME! (More on their awesomeness in a future post that I'm working on) They invited us to their wedding reception even though I hadn't really met them yet. I even got an email from Kat saying how she loved my blog and was really hoping we would go to the reception. Well, of course we went and we had such a good time. While we were there, we met Joe's ex-wife, Trish. They are all great friends. It was the first time I've ever seen exes with that kind of relationship. It was beautiful.

Well Trish came up to me at the reception and said "I read your blog! It's so nice to meet you!" Seriously, it made me blush. It was probably the closest I'll ever get to feeling like a celebrity. She had said that their youngest daughter would be turning 9 soon and maybe I could make her cake. I said I would love to. A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Trish with the cake details.

Lucia would be having a glamour girl party and wanted a cake with a high heel shoe on top and make-up, jewelry and things like that on it. They only needed 12 servings but I really wanted to make it bigger. So I did. I couldn't make any jewelry with my limited skills but I molded a shoe, some nail polishes, lipstick and some roses all out of fondant.

This was also my very first time doing drop strings on a cake. They've always intimidated me, but I thought they would look so good on this cake. I feel accomplished now having done them.

So... Trish, Kat? How'd I do?

Cupcake Tower

2010-05-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

Here's the wedding "cake" I made for today. I'm not a huge fan of cupcakes for wedding cakes but it's not my wedding and no one's paying me for my opinion. This is a very small wedding cake. The top tier is a 6 inch cake and then there's 2 dozen cupcakes. All are red velvet with cream cheese icing. I'm totally blaming the cream cheese icing for the lack of smoothness on the cake. It's the hardest stuff for me to work with.

The ribbon and flowers look red in the picture but they're more of a fuschia color in real life. My hands will be stained pink for a long time to come.

So, now that I'm done making excuses, here's the cake!

Flowers on the "Farm"

2010-05-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

The garden is bursting with beautiful flowers. Flowers in all colors and sizes. I've been watching our sunflowers with great interest this year. I saved the seeds from our tallest sunflower last year to plant this year. Last year's only got to maybe 7 or 8 feet tall. This year's are pushing 12 feet! I will save seeds for next year from this year's tallest flower. The first one began to blossom this morning. By this evening, this is what I saw.

I expect it should be all the way open tomorrow.

Looking at this sunflower got me in the mood to take some pictures of a few other flowers in the garden.

New to me this year are Bachelor's Buttons. I love the pop of blue they give. I planted them down the entire front of my squash/corn bed.

I love this next picture. It's an onion blossom. I planted green onions last fall and they are just now going to seed.

What's a garden without marigolds? I've heard they are a great pest deterrent so I plant them all over the place.

Thyme flowers are just about the most dainty and lovely things I've ever seen. They are a beautiful shade of lavender. At first I was pulling them off my plants but decided to just let them go because they are so gorgeous.

And of course my favorite, the tomato blossom.

That particular one is supposed to be an Amish Paste tomato but I'm thinking I got the wrong seeds. The tomatoes growing on that plant don't look like Amish Paste tomatoes. That's disappointing because I was really looking forward to trying those. Oh well.

Okay, that was a nice distraction but I have a wedding cake due tomorrow that I should really get going on. See ya!

Harvest Monday!!

2010-05-17T08:33:00.001-07:00

I get to catch up today on showing what I've been harvesting. It's getting pretty cool.

Nothing too fancy here. This onion seemed ready to be pulled. It's not huge by any means but it's the first time I've ever gotten onions to bulb up at all so I was thrilled!

This harvest I used most of to make a huge veggie pizza. It's the first of the swiss chard and the first bell pepper. Those peppers are a red variety but I really wanted peppers on my pizza so I grabbed a green one off of the plant. There's plenty still growing and I'll let them turn red.

I have no idea if this is normal to have a ripe pumpkin at this stage, but I do. It was off of the mystery pumpkin plant. It will be turned into pumpkin bread in no time at all.

Also, drum-roll please. The first ripe tomatoes!!! Actually the very first one I didn't get to take a picture of because Bella ate it. I'm ok with that. These are Juliet tomatoes and the 2 plants I have of them are absolutely loaded with tomatoes.

And here is yesterday's harvest. I got some zucchini (of course), yellow squash, lemon squash, the first of the green beans including the first 2 purple beans and plenty more tomatoes. I also got the first Black Cherry tomatoes. These ones are mine, all mine! They are my favorite cherry tomatoes and I will share once they start rolling in, but these first few have my name written all over them.

It's looking like some of the bigger slicing tomatoes are starting to turn and I'm really very excited about that. It's getting pretty hard to get to the tomatoes though. It's quite the jungle in there.

Go check out Daphne's Dandelions to see more bloggers' harvests and even add your own!

I'm back!!

2010-05-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

Wow! Going without blogging for that long was painful. I feel like there's so much to catch up on. My computer was attacked again and we couldn't use it for the past few weeks. My rad brother-in-law, Nicholas, came to our house on Friday night and spent a good amount of time figuring out what the deal was. But he was the conqueror and my computer is fixed. Yay!!

I have a few upcoming cake projects that I'll post when they are finished but I also did 2 cakes a couple weeks ago that I wanted to show.

The first was a baby shower cake for our friends. They live in Flagstaff but came down to the valley so we could have a party to welcome their first baby. I just went with shades of pink and some chocolate baby booties on the top. They really liked it.

The other cake I made for my soon-to-be sister-in-law's 21st birthday. We were all going out to dinner that night so I thought I'd make her cake and bring it with us. I started it a few hours before we needed to leave and worked very quickly to get it ready in time. Once it was finished, I went to go do my hair so we could leave. Five minutes later Bella came running into my bathroom screaming that the dog had eaten the cake.

It was my fault really. I knew she could reach the island where I had left it. I usually put the cakes in a different spot so she can't reach them if I haven't boxed them up yet. But it was almost time to leave and I just needed to fix my hair. So, Laura had no cake. Sad.

Here it was before the tragedy.

And after.

Dumb dog.

Anyway I will have some pictures for tomorrow's "Harvest Monday". I've been so sad that I had to miss the past couple. I harvested some pretty cool stuff. But you'll see tomorrow.

The Enemy And The Warrior

2010-04-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

I'm fighting a battle here on the home front. A battle I have never had to fight before. A battle I would prefer not to have to fight because it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The battle's name is "Aphids"

Those nasty little bugs started on some of my overwintered tomato plants. I even pulled them out and burned them hoping to stop the spread, but it was too late. I don't like the idea at all of spraying pesticides on my vegetable plants so at first I tried just a hard blast with the hose to knock them off the plants. Supposedly, once they are knocked off they won't be able to make it back on and will die.

When I noticed that the hose was not working and the bugs were moving to more plants I took the next step. I made an insecticidal soap spray. It's just water with a little bit of dish soap. The soap is supposed to kill them and it seemed to be working for a while, but these are tough little buggers. Next I added some cayenne powder to my soap spray which is also supposed to work. I think you know where this is going. It still wasn't working effectively.

I seriously began considering some Sevin spray. It's a chemical pesticide. It's everything I don't want to be. Not only would it kill the bad bugs it would also kill any beneficial bugs, like bees. I love bees. My garden needs bees, but if I didn't do something soon, those aphids were going to kill all of my plants. I went to the store and picked a bottle up. I had it in my hand and everything, but I just couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Later that day, as I was doing hand-to-hand combat, I noticed an ally. Or at least I hope it is.

Ladybugs are voracious aphid eaters. She will lay eggs right in the thick of the battle and her little offspring will also take care of my problem for me. Please let that actually be a ladybug.

Now I sure am glad I didn't use the pesticide!

Dreamin'

2010-04-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that we are not your average city-folks. We bought our house 5 years ago before we knew what we really wanted. If we knew then what we know now, it would be different. We would have bought property with land. Lots of land and no HOA's. Stupid HOA. They cramp my style.

I think we've done well with what we have. Most of our yard has been turned into gardens. I want our land to work for us not the other way around. We even brought chickens into our yard (which we just found out is against HOA policy, shhh!) Granted, I have young children who need some running around space. Room to play tag and make-believe princess/warrior games. So we left quite a bit of space for them to do those kinds of things.

But what we really want is farmland. We want land for animals and a ginormous garden. We would love to have more chickens and some goats and maybe a horse or two. Those things just aren't happening in the house we live in now.

Yesterday, we went to visit Mike's Aunt. She lives on a couple of acres with her man and they have hopes of starting an animal rescue there. Right now they have 2 horses and 2 goats.

The horses were great. The brownish one is Lena and the gray one is Barney. Poor Barney. His story broke my heart.

His old owners did not like him. They treated him very poorly and would brand him just for the "fun" of it. You can see where they branded his face with a 5.

I'm not sure why they didn't love this guy. He's so sweet and docile. But they were going to send him off to be made into dog food. Now he lives with Mike's Aunt who adores him.

What's not to love?

Their two goats are named Jimmy and Ruthie. Jimmy is a baby and he still cries for his mama, who just lives at the farm behind their land. It's so sad to hear him crying and calling for her.

Bella tried to feed Jimmy, but he's very skittish and wouldn't eat from her.

You can't say she wasn't persistent.

Another goat needs a home and Mike's aunt asked if we would like it. Yeah we would but we couldn't have one at our house. She said she would house the goat and we would just need to buy the food and come over to visit and clean the pen once in a while. So we are thinking this over, but could very well be goat owners shortly.

And finally, a series of pictures featuring my husband. For some reason he felt the need to put his hand inside a bull's mouth. Over and over and over.

You mess with the bull, you get the tongue.
And then he bit him.
Hard.
Drew blood.
Yeah, my husband's smart.

Now we are dreaming of the day when we can have our own animals and land. It doesn't seem like it has to be too far in the future.

Harvest Monday

2010-04-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

This week's harvest was only zucchini and squash. We also got the first lemon squash. Ain't it cute! (Ain't ain't a word and you ain't allowed to use it.)

Our harvest is modeled by the beautiful Bella this week.

I foresee lots of zucchini bread, squash casserole and stuffed squash in our dinners this week.

I'm working again this week so posts have been few and far between. I barely have time to even be outside let alone take pictures and stuff. I'm pretty sure I'll have a post tomorrow to introduce our newest family member and my sister Jenna requested pictures of how we have our backyard layed out. So I need to get to that too.

Anyway, check out Daphne's Dandelions for this week's Harvest Monday!!

Harvest Monday

2010-04-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

Every Monday, Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday, where bloggers can show what they harvested that week.

This will be my first time joining in!!

We pulled the remaining carrots this week to make room for other things to go in. It's a respectable harvest I think. And they were very yummy.

Also this morning I was able to harvest our first zucchini and 3 yellow squash. These will be used for dinner tonight and I'm giddy with excitement about it.

Alas, the peas did not make it. I ended up pulling them yesterday along with the lettuce which started getting bitter. I didn't think it got too warm for it but maybe I wasn't watering enough. I don't know. I'm toying with the idea of growing lettuce indoors through the warmer months so I won't have to buy any. I'm not sure how much Mike will like the idea though.

Little Mermaid Cake

2010-04-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

I just finished this week's cake. She requested a mermaid cake but didn't care if it was The Little Mermaid or just any generic mermaid so I chose Ariel. I sprayed the whole cake with pearl luster dust to make it sparkly and pretty. The starfish are made from fondant and Ariel is made out of chocolate. I think it's cute.

I always get a little nervous making cakes around this time. My son's birthday is on Tuesday and I want his cake to be special. I felt badly last year when I made an amazing cake for someone the day before his birthday and his cake sucked. Hopefully that won't be the case this year. He does want something that might be tricky for me though. Fingers crossed!

And then there was destruction

2010-04-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

I went outside to do my morning walk-through and to pollinate some squash since we don't have many bees yet. Everything looked great. Until I got to the last bed.

The peas have been attacked. It looks brutal. At first I thought, wow we must have had some serious wind last night.

And then I looked at Liberty. She dropped her ears and went down to her belly, a sure sign that she's done something bad.

She must have really wanted those peas. She didn't touch anything else in that bed. She knows good eatin' when she sees it.

I'm not sure if they'll make it. They are still rooted in the ground pretty well and could rebound I suppose, but they're season is coming to a close soon. I wonder if I should just pull them out and move on.

Garden of Eatin' Part II

2010-04-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

One of my second favorite things to grow are squash. I love how massive the plants get. They can just take over my backyard and I'd be a happy girl. So would Liberty, I bet. And then she'd destroy it all because that's what she does. I better stop before I start dwelling on last year's pumpkin destruction. Aww, crap. Too late.

Sad.

Okay, so like I said, I love squash. I had never even tasted it before growing it myself maybe 3 years ago. Now, there's not a time where there's not some kind of squash in my fridge. I like to make chips out of zucchini. It's very healthy and extremely delish!

Outside right now I have 3 types of summer squash and 7 types of winter squash. The yellow summer squash are going bananas. I have 2 plants and both are bursting with fruit.

I also have 2 zucchini plants and 2 lemon squash plants. The first of the zucchini was pollinated yesterday and it's looking like the first female lemon squash blossom will open tomorrow.

As far as winter squash goes I have buttercup, butternut, musquee de provence, jarrahdale, sugar pumpkin, blue hubbard and a mystery squash/pumpkin that came up on it's own.

I'm really excited for the Jarrahdale. It's a "blue" pumpkin. It ripens to a grayish-blue color and I've heard it's very delicious. The first one got pollinated yesterday. Isn't it a doll?

I'm thinking our "mystery pumpkin" is just an ordinary jack-o-lantern pumpkin. I seem to remember planting those seeds in that area last fall but nothing came up. The plants are quite vigorous though with plenty of blossoms. I love surprise plants. They always seem to be so healthy. Maybe I should stop planting things and just let whatever wants to grow, grow.

Nah.

Here's a mystery pumpkin baby

Other note-worthy things happening...

The onions are starting to bulb up

I'm getting a handful of peas every morning. Of course I eat them right there. They're too good not to.

The blackberry plants are doing well.

One has even sent up some new shoots. I can't even tell you how happy that made me to see. Well after I was finished being freaked out by it, then I was excited. That means they're growing well, right?

The first of my red peppers is forming.

And I harvested a nice bunch of carrots for dinner.

Seriously, if you're not already growing any veggies, you totally should. It's so amazing how accomplished it can make you feel. Not to mention how great it is to know exactly how and when your food was grown. As Martha would say, "It's a good thing."

The Garden of Eatin'

2010-04-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Exciting stuff is happening out back. This post will just be about the queen of my garden, the tomato. If I could only plant one thing in my garden , it would without a doubt be tomatoes. Don't get me wrong, I love to grow squash and peppers and all those other yummy veggies, but it just wouldn't be a garden without tomatoes.

Last year at this time, we were close to harvesting our first ripe tomato. This year's tomatoes have been much slower. I think it's because we had such a cool spring. Baby tomatoes are just now forming. So... we'll see how it goes. I do have my shade setup ready to go if necessary.

So here's the tomato patch as of a few minutes ago.

I spent a good while this past weekend tying up stray branches so I could actually walk through the paths. There's one path that is beyond hope. I won't be able to get through there until the plants are finished and I pull them out. That's ok though. I can still get to the plants from other paths. This is one of the roomier paths. Yeah, I'm thinking next year I should plant them farther away from each other.

You can see in that picture how heavily I mulched the ground. I'm trying lots of things this year in hopes of improving my results. The mulch will hold moisture in the soil and hopefully keep the soil a little bit cooler. Both of those things being very important when growing in the desert.

There are blossoms everywhere! This is a set on one of my Chocolate Cherry tomato plants.

I did a quick walk-through to take some pictures of the baby maters.

Here's a Chocolate Cherry

A Jet Star

A Better Boy (this was one of my faves from last year. I know it's a typical hybrid but it performed really well for me and I really loved the taste)

And a Cherokee Purple

Mike met some of our neighbors the other night and got to talking about our backyard. This neighbor is apparently a horticulturalist and has attempted to grow a garden without much success. So Mike brought him to tour our garden and he was really impressed. He called his wife over so she could see and had me give her the tour and some pointers. That was pretty cool and I think I made them into believers. It is possible to grow food in the desert. Mike is still hoping I'll learn to grow a bacon cheeseburger plant. That would make him very happy.

Tomorrow I'll give you the rest of the tour.

Happy Easter!!!

2010-04-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter to you all from our family.

And yes, we were posing in front of my tomatoes. What can I say? They're nice and Green.

Harvest Day!!

2010-04-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've been harvesting things here and there for a while now. Nothing too much. A couple of tomatoes or baby carrots, but nothing to be used for a meal really. Yesterday was a busy day. We needed to be at church by 5:30 last night so that meant there was homework, cleaning and dinner that all needed to be done in a small amount of time. We don't usually eat dinner here until at least 6:30. Yesterday we ate at 4:30.

I ran to the garden to get some salad fixings since we have lettuce coming out of our ears at the moment. I also picked some tomatoes and green onions and some rosemary to go with our chicken.

That was a ton of lettuce and I barely made a dent in our lettuce patch.

Then I moved on to our summer squash. Now usually, a squash plant puts out many male blossoms before you ever even see a female blossom and you need both at the same time to grow a squash. My yellow squash for some reason has been putting out nothing but female blossoms for weeks now. I might have seen a male blossom bud starting this morning but in the meantime I've got like 7 baby yellow squashes on each of my plants. So I pulled the bigger ones off to encourage more growth. I suppose I could eat these. They'll be very tender and delicious, but instead I'll give them to the chickens. I know they'll appreciate them very much.

Speaking of the chickens, check it out!!

We are now getting 4 eggs a day. I eat 2 in the mornings for breakfast but they are really starting to add up. Bella and I are going to do some baking today to use some eggs up.

Anyone have any good egg recipes?

Hockey Cake

2010-03-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

Here's the cake I made this weekend. It was a last minute order from my mother-in-law's best friend. She's ordered many cakes from me in the past so I was more than willing to do this cake.

All she asked for was a half sheet cake and the birthday boy likes hockey. She said his favorite team is the Anaheim Ducks. This is the very first hockey cake I've ever been asked to make and I had no clue who the Anaheim Ducks were. I did a quick google search and found the logo. Then I did my best to copy it using fondant. I think it's ok.

She'll be here in about an hour to pick it up. Hope she likes it!!

A Girl and Her Dog

2010-03-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

I've been in the kitchen most of today working on a last minute cake order. I heard some shuffling around coming from the living room and when I got the chance to check, this is what I saw.

Bella had tucked Liberty in with her own blanket and snuggled down next to her while they watched a movie. They were even holding hands. Awwww!

Liberty fell asleep like that and Bella stayed there until her movie was over.

Cute kids.

It's time for the firsts

2010-03-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

I took garden pictures last week to post but had to retake them since so much more growth has happened. Lots of exciting firsts happened last week.

I pulled the first carrots.

Root crops are hard for me. I just want to pull them up and see what's going on under the dirt. I pulled these two carrots to check on them. They're a smaller variety of carrot called "little fingers". I think they're looking good so far. And they were mighty tasty!

Here is our tomato patch

and our first tomato blossom!

Since I took this picture 2 days ago there are many more blossoms open on almost all of the plants.

My summer squash is growing so quickly! Here's the first little baby and there are a ton more coming on.

The first that I'm most excited about is this.

The first pea blossom. I adore garden peas. Honestly, none of them have ever made it inside the house. I eat them straight from the garden. They're so much better than the one's you buy in the store. Like, unbelievably better.

The first flower bud is about to open on the blackberry plants.

I need to be much more diligent with the blackberry plants than I was with the blueberry plants last year. The blueberries didn't make it. It was just way too hot for them. I've been told that blackberries are a much better option for the desert. We shall see.

Sweet Sixteen

2010-03-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

My good friend Amy's daughter turned 16. She is also my kids' babysitter and we all love her dearly.

They held a party for her today at the park and I asked Amy if I could make her cake. I wanted her to have a special cake for such a special birthday. Her party colors were pink, black and silver.

I began this cake last night around 6pm and worked until 11pm. Then I woke up at 9am and finished it by 11am. It went really quickly. I added the flowers as an after thought and when I got there the birthday girl was very happy. She had wanted those exact flowers on her cake but Amy didn't want to burden me by asking for anything else. Very perfect. They loved it. It's vanilla cake with strawberry filling.

Quick post

2010-03-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

I just have to put this in my blog. Yesterday when the kids and I came home from work, I went outside to check on the chickens and fill their food and water containers. Then, just out of habit, I lifted the nest box lid to check for eggs.
There in the coop was a small perfectly shaped brown egg.

It took me a second to realize it was real before I scooped it up and ran it in to show the kids.

Isn't it so adorable? It's smaller than the eggs I buy at the grocery store but that's to be expected. The eggs will get larger as the chickens get into their egg-laying groove. Here's our egg compared to a large grocery store egg.

We were all really excited to check the coop this morning for more eggs, but alas there were none. Maybe tomorrow. I'm so proud of my girls!

Blue Giraffe Cake

2010-03-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

I made a baby shower cake this weekend. All that was requested was a blue giraffe and blue stars. This is what I did.

It's just an 8 inch vanilla cake with strawberry filling.

I hand modeled this giraffe with fondant. I think he's sweet.

I started working for my mother-in-law this past week. It's a temporary thing just to help out because she's so busy with her business over the next couple of weeks. It's cool because I can bring the kids with me and I make a little extra money. So I've been pretty busy and won't be able to update my blog quite as much over the next little while but I have another cake for this weekend. Stay tuned for that one plus some garden updates. Things are growing so quickly out there. It's exciting for me to see the updated pictures.

Anyway, that's all.

Hint, Hint Ladies

2010-03-06T09:51:00.001-08:00

My chickens are now 19 weeks old. Everything I've read says egg laying can begin anywhere from 18-24 weeks old. I'm starting to get antsy.

I've also read that it sometimes helps to put golf balls or fake eggs in the nesting boxes so the chickens kind of get the hint that the eggs are supposed to go there. The kids and I went to the store yesterday to get some plastic Easter eggs for that purpose. I decided on these lovely glow in the dark eggs since they were the closest to a normal color egg (at least when they're not glowing).

I'm hoping that seeing the eggs might release some instinctual urge to make some eggs of their own. You know, like when you see someone yawn you automatically want to yawn. I have smart theories.

Now we wait.

Get on it, ladies!!

My Daughter, The Artist

2010-03-05T16:27:00.000-08:00

In church the other night, Bella learned about the Good Shepherd. The Shepherd who would leave the 99 sheep to go and find that one lost sheep. It's such a great parable showing how much God loves each of us and doesn't want even one of His children to be lost.

The kids drew pictures of sheep (complete with cotton ball wool) and a shepherd to help them remember the story.

I laughed my foolish head off when I saw Bella's picture. Apparently, in her mind, the shepherd was a shepherdess. And what distinguishes a shepherd from a shepherdess?

Why, boobies of course.

I told her that she was right. Ladies do have boobies but she should probably not draw them anymore since she would be starting school soon and might get in trouble for that kind of thing. She just shrugged her little shoulders and said "alright" and went off to play.

Ah, kids.

Technically it is a harvest

2010-03-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

It might be a small one but I harvested a few of the radishes. Aren't they purty?

Don't mind my weird wrinkled hand.

Now I have a confession. I've never tried a radish before. Well at least before today. The only place I've ever had the opportunity to try them was in salads, but I avoided them. I'm trying so hard to not be such a wimp about food lately. I want to expand my horizons and grow up a little. I mean, aren't I a little too old to be scared of certain foods?

Yes. I think so too.

Mike and I finally went out last weekend for our anniversary/birthday/valentine's dinner. I decided it was finally the night for me to try lobster. I've always wanted to because it looks good and I figured it might be easier for me to eat than say salmon or some other fish (I don't like seafood or at least I think I don't. I haven't ever really given it a try since I was a child)

I ordered a steak and a lobster tail so that way if I didn't like the lobster I would still have something to eat. My plate arrived and I immediately got the creeps. Are lobsters somehow related to cockroaches? Because I swear that tail looked very giant roach-esque. Sure it was red and all but seriously, way gross.

I dug in anyway and took a bite.

Barf.

Not tasty. Not tasty at all. Mike laughed at me as he transferred the offending item from my plate to his. Just to be sure I tried it once more. Maybe it was my fear that made me not like it.

Nope. Still nasty.

But why am I telling you about how I wasted a $30 lobster tail? Because I just tried my radishes. Bella and I both did at the same time. We brought our radishes inside, washed them up, and I cut a slice for each of us. We held our pieces in our fingers and did a "cheers" with them and then popped them in our mouths.

There was a pause as we chewed. I think our faces mirrored each other's as they went from apprehension to thoughtful to repulsion. Bella spit hers out. I took one for the team and swallowed mine.

Well... the chickens really like them.

Maybe I should stop trying things.

Hey Hannah?

2010-02-27T08:31:00.000-08:00

Hey what?

So... we all know how much you love to garden and that you really like your chickens, but, umm... do you still do any baking?

I'm glad you asked, oh faithful reader. I do have at least one faithful reader, right? Crickets. How sad.

Anyway!!!

Yes I am still baking. As a matter of fact, an AMAZING opportunity was dropped in my lap last week of which I'm not really sure what to think. I mean, I don't want to get my hopes up or anything but it would be amazing. Because of this, I have spent this week working on dessert ideas and making up some samples. Yesterday I did these.

Chocolate cupcakes dipped in ganache and... wait for it... "twinkie" cream filling. (I'll have to think of a new name for the filling I suppose)

Don't they look scrumptious?

Also, I was cleaning out my camera because I'm tired of only having enough memory for 12 pictures at a time, and came across 2 cakes I made last year that I never posted for some reason. Well, after looking at them I think I know why I didn't post them. They kind of suck. But I'm sure they were loved nonetheless.

The first is a quickie wedding cake. The couple called about 2 days before their wedding from Walmart's bakery. I know this couple and love them dearly. They asked if it was at all possible to make their cake on such short notice and were totally prepared to resort to a Walmart sheetcake. I told them of course I would do it and got straight to work.

I promise, I really do love them, I just suck at making cakes I guess.

This next cake was for my friend Heidi's baby shower. They just asked for pink and green butterflies. This is what I made.

Dude, what is up with the wrinkly top tier? Sorry Heidi. I promise I love you too. Don't let my cake skills be the scale on which my affections are weighed. It'll let you down 9 out of 10 times.

Good times.

The Chickens Have A Home!!

2010-02-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Let's hear it for Mike!! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

This is such a relief for me. After many months of temporary housing, the chickens' new house is ready and in place. We were keeping them in their run that was set in the middle of the yard. This bothered me because it took up so much space. You look out the back door and there's a chicken run. Plus it's been raining a lot so the run was pretty much always covered with an ugly camouflage tarp. Hello, I could still see it. The camouflage wasn't working too well.

So my fantastic husband went to work today on getting the run moved to it's permanent place and the coop attached to it. I think it looks so good and the chickens seem to love it. A few of them have fallen asleep tonight in the nest boxes which I'm not sure if I'm supposed to let them do that or discourage them from it. For tonight, I think it's adorable so I'll let them stay.

We really love our chickens. They are so much fun to watch and so soft to touch. Mike spent a lot of time inside with them just watching them and petting them. I left to go walking with a friend and when I got back, he was still inside.

Bella wanted to get in on it too.

Here chickie chickies!

Bella held one of the Franks (have I ever told you why all the black chickens are named Frank? When they were going through their awkward stage, one of the chicks had a ring of chick fluff around the crown of her head that looked like Frank Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond. She was then named Frank. Since we can't really tell any of those ones apart, they all became Frank.)

She also held Gretchen.

And so did Mike. I think Gretchen is so pretty. She's a Rhode Island Red and the only one of our chickens that I chose. All of the others were surprises from Mike.

Finally, here's Blondie and two of the Franks checking out the inside of their new coop. I think they like it!

Now, we wait for eggs.

Oh yeah!! P.S. I went to the feed store today to get more wood shavings for the chickens and they had more baby chicks. They were extremely cute and I wanted to have them but they also had new baby ducks and baby turkeys!! I wanted a duckling sooo badly. When I got home I told Mike I bought some ducks. He said, "No you didn't" And I said, "No I didn't. But I really wanted to." He actually said he wouldn't have been upset if I did!!!

Now I'm kicking myself for not getting any, but really, what would I do with ducks? We have nowhere to keep them. Although, we had nowhere to keep chickens when Mike brought some home back in October and look at us now! Hahaha!

Around the yard

2010-02-19T13:14:00.000-08:00

Things are coming together out back. The tomato bed is officially completed. The plants are in the ground with cages, soaker hoses and mulch.

Next to the tomatoes are a bunch of peppers. I actually ended up planting a total of 24 pepper plants. I just didn't want to see the plants go to waste so I found places for them. These are just a portion of them.

The whole rest of this bed (the entire length of our back wall) will be the home of our corn, squashes and sunflowers. I planted the sunflower seeds all long the back edge. Ash planted the corn seeds for me, but I'm not sure he did it right. I may have to replant them. I also put the squash plants out and finished with another soaker hose. I'm not completely sure if I should mulch this bed. I guess there would be no harm in it I just don't want to have to buy another bale of hay if I don't need to.

The middle bed is finally getting some good sunlight and things have been bursting with growth.

I'm hoping to harvest these radishes next week maybe so I can put the cucumbers in their spot.

I haven't had much luck with traditional cucumbers in the past. They always end up being very bitter. I'm trying one more year on them and if it doesn't work I'll move on and just stick with the Armenian cucumbers which thrive in our heat.

The lettuce is getting cute. This variety is called Brune d'hiver. At the rate it's been growing these past few days, I should be able to harvest very soon. So excited for fresh garden salads. I eat salads everyday, most days I have 2, so that will be nice.

Here's Liberty. I think she's saying how sorry she is for destroying all of my hard work all of the time.

I'm not buying it.

What a birthday!!

2010-02-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

It has been such a fun week for me. I'm sure this week stresses Mike out every year because we have so much packed into it but he always does so great and never complains. This week we had our anniversary on the 10th, my birthday on the 11th and then Valentine's Day on the 14th of course. That's a lot of lovey holidays for one week wouldn't you say?

I started the week with this look...

(not too bad but my hair was absolutely fried. I need a better flat iron. Mine is destroying my hair.)

and ended with this one.

What do you think? I likey.

My son Ash won his school spelling bee last week and this week went to compete in the district spelling bee. The competition was the morning of my birthday. Mike took the day off of work so we could go see him. Little man got out on his first word. His voice was so shaky and I could tell he was ready to cry. He even forgot to say the word before and after spelling it so I knew he was definitely nervous. Nonetheless, we are very proud of him for making it to the district spelling bee and now he has one under his belt and knows what to expect for next time. He'll be back!

Later that day we finally moved Bella into a big girl bed. She's actually been in her crib all this time. It had the side rail taken off but was still a crib. We had bought her a bed last year but for some reason never got around to buying a mattress. And so the bed sat in the garage and Bella stayed in her crib. This week was the week though. She looks so grown up now.

(I love her bedding! I got a deal on it too. It was on clearance at Target originally $70 for $17. Nice)

The kids made my birthday cake for me this year. It was their first time baking by themselves and I won't lie, I was very nervous to try it. They did such a great job though. A little heavy handed with the sprinkles, but hey, they're kids. Sprinkles are the epitome of deliciousness to them.

Ash took this picture since I wasn't allowed to see the cake until it was time to blow out the candles. Then I took this next one.

Mike and I had planned to go out on Saturday night to celebrate the trifecta of holidays. He called me one day and said he needed to talk to me about our date. I asked if it was good or bad and he replied that it depended how I looked at it. Apparently my sweet sweet friends from church had been planning a surprise birthday party for me for a month and it just so happened to be on the same Saturday we were planning our date. One of the hostesses asked Mike to tell me about it so I wouldn't be hurt by him cancelling our date. She knew that if he did cancel I'd be a mopey mess and when they tried to get me to the party I wouldn't go insisting on just staying in bed or something. She knows me well.

I was so surprised! No one has ever thrown me a surprise party before and I felt so loved and special. It was a great time. They threw me a tea party because I'm such a girly girl. There was fancy China and delicious little finger foods.

They were even considerate of my diet needs and sweetened the drinks with splenda! I must say I did indulge in the treats though. Mini eclairs, cheesecakes and lemon bars? You must be crazy to think I could resist.

We played fun games including Twister. Even though they may kill me for this, I have to post some of the pictures. Hey I told them it might end up on the blog!

Oh that was so hard!! I was hovering above the ground in that position. My triceps and thighs were burning. Twister is a good workout! I fell right after that picture.

I was so very blessed by all the gifts and cards and birthday wishes I received this year. Thank you all so much who had a hand in making my day feel so special. I love you!! Smooches, smooches.

10 years ago

2010-02-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

A little more than 10 years ago, I was a young girl right out of high school. My Mom was about to move out of state and to an 18 year-old girl, that means the end of her world. I had three best friends and could not fathom having to move away from them and my slew of crushes. I had even just began dating a boy who was headed off to Army bootcamp.

My friends and I decided to move in together and we went about searching for an apartment. Our first apartment. It was magical. We had a fireplace and a balcony and I decorated one of the bathrooms with my favorite shade of lavender, something I'm sure I couldn't have gotten away with anywhere else. It was all ours.

We soon learned that a group of boys lived in the apartment across from us. These boys were hysterical to us. They were so opposite from me. I was a preppy, shy, Mormon girl. They were in a hardcore band called Abishai. We would go watch their band play and I stuck out like a sore thumb. In a sea of kids dressed in black, there I was in a white top and yellow skirt.

Even though we were so different, something was drawing me to the lead guitar player. I knew him from school. In fact my best friend had once had a huge crush on him. He was too cool for me. Anyway we were both dating people.

Each weekend we would hang out with those boys and on the occasion that the guitar player wouldn't be out with his girlfriend, he would come too. One night, I was getting ready in my lavender bathroom. The door was open as I finished combing my hair. I placed the comb on the counter and turned to leave. As soon as I was in the hallway, the guitar player was there too. Without a word he grabbed me and kissed me and left me speechless. Speechless and smitten.

He didn't say much after that. He apologized the next day, but he also broke it off with his girlfriend. I did the same with my boyfriend and we began to spend everyday with each other. Eventually, I told him I loved him and he got scared. He said he "didn't know what love was", and he began to pull away. At one point he tried to break up with me. I know it was only because he did love me and that freaked him out. He never went through with dumping me. Instead he let himself love me. He loved me all along. Even before that first kiss.

That guitar player became my guitar player. I became his preppy girl. We've discovered that although we are different from each other, the important stuff is the same. I believe we were brought together by God. We fit together. His jagged edges fit my jagged edges and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Happy Anniversary, my sweet husband.

I may have a problem

2010-02-08T14:20:00.001-08:00

My issues with hoarding stretch far and wide. One of the areas where it shows the most is with seeds. These are my seeds. I have far more than I could ever plant but to me they represent security. I know that with the skills I am learning, with these seeds I could potentially provide food for my family should something terrible ever happen.

I really cannot pass a seed rack without buying at least one pack of seeds. It's embarrassing really. I mean who needs over 60 packs of tomato seeds? Me, that's who. And in an effort to be completely transparent I must tell you that I ordered 8 more the other day and they should be here any time now!! (My heartbeat just quickened a little)

But you know what? Seeds are cheap. There are so many varieties that I feel I need to try. Have you seen how many cool kinds of squashes are out there?!? I'm not going to break the bank by buying as many as I want. Now if I had an expensive jewelry buying habit, that would be different.

I don't think it looks as overwhelming when I organize them into this old shoebox. Maybe I'm in denial.

Garden Happenings

2010-02-06T16:47:00.001-08:00

The garden is coming to life again after a very wet and kind of chilly winter here.

I started last week with tilling the garden up and adding some amendments to my soil. It's such a great workout! My thighs and arms were killing me the next day.

Here's the corner bed all tilled and waiting for the tomato plants.

I planted the tomatoes on the 1st which was earlier than last year by a few days but the weather has warmed up and I figured it would be fine to get them out then. So far so good. I have 23 tomato plants in the ground at the moment. I laid down a soaker hose and plan on mulching with several inches of hay to keep the soil cool and moist. I still need to purchase a few more tomato cages.

I also planted quite a few pepper plants, both sweet and hot. I haven't had too great of luck with the bell peppers but I'm not giving up. We (actually more like I) learned to love peppers back before I was pregnant with Bella and trying to lose weight. It's one of my go-to vegetables.

Elsewhere in the garden, my lettuce, radishes, and carrots are finally starting to show some growth. That bed really doesn't get much sunlight at all during the winter so everything in there grows so slowly. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for any harvest at all.

I planted my eggplants in the same bed as my onions and peas. I hope that's alright. The peas should be long gone by the time the eggplants really get their groove on and I think I remember reading that onions are pretty good to plant just about anywhere. Let's hope I didn't just make that up.

As for the strawberries, well, Liberty destroyed the bed 3 times. I had given up planting anymore crowns and thought maybe I would just stick more tomatoes in there, but then Bella and I were out shopping and they had strawberry plants. I couldn't help myself. I bought 3 of them and divided up the roots to get 9 plants total. I put some flimsy fencing around the bed to hopefully discourage the fluffy nightmare that is my dog. Three days in so far and she hasn't touched it. I will have to be very diligent in keeping an eye on her.

Finally, inside the house my squashes and melons have begun to sprout. I think I need to wait about 2 more weeks before I plant them outside which should be perfect timing since I still need to buy bags and bags of manure to amend that bed with.

Cardinals Cake

2010-02-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

My computer is working for the moment. My brother-in-law still recommends getting it rebuilt once again to make sure it is completely virus-free but since it's fine right now, I thought I'd post some pictures!!

I made this cake for my dear friends a couple of weeks ago. It was for their baby boy's first birthday. They are huge Cardinals fans and just asked for a cake along that theme. I thought about it for a while and was going to just do a round cake with a picture of the Cardinals logo on top but really wanted to do something special for them. This is what I ended up doing.

First I had to make a template of the logo so I borrowed a picture of it from the dad. I copied it as best I could and then used it as a pattern to cut out fondant in the same design. That took FOREVER. Those eyes and beaks are seriously small. I had Ash helping me. One of his cardinals even made it onto the cake! He was quite proud of himself.

I really like the way this cake turned out. My friends really liked it too. I'm glad. They deserve good things.

blogging from my phone

2010-02-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

Our computer got another virus. Lame. So I haven't been able to update you all on my very entertaining life. I finally figured out how to blog from my phone again though. Yay for cool phones!

A lot has been going on here. I got my tomatoes, eggplants and some of my peppers planted in my garden. The tomatoes look so good! I put them in the very first spot of land that we ever made into a garden. Its amazing how much better the soil looks now than it did that first year. Its so soft and dark now. I think the tomatoes will be very happy.

I began selling my extra plants today. I ended up selling 37 plants in one day at $2 each. Not too bad for one day I think. Next time though I'll probably only plant heirloom tomato plants. It seems that most people only want them.

The chickens are doing well and getting big. They should probably start laying eggs in about a month. You know there's going to be a party over here when that first egg arrives!

There's something about the start of spring-like weather. Of course it comes sooner for us in Arizona than most of the country. I love sitting outside, even when the backyard is messy, and enjoying it. The sun is shining, the weather is warming and the plants are growing. It's glorious.

The hope of a new season is in the air. Can you feel it?

Potting Up and Cake

2010-01-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

Things are getting pretty busy here. We've got little plants all over the house. I set up two more grow lights in assorted places in the house to hold them while they grow. It's kind of ghetto really, but I figure it's only for another couple of weeks and we can live with it for that short amount of time. I'm not sure I will plant this many seeds next time around though. I planted a ton with the hopes of selling the leftover seedlings for some extra cash. We'll see how that goes.

I spent a good portion of a morning potting some peppers and eggplants up. They needed bigger pots and more soil so their precious little roots could spread. This is only part of one tray. I have 3 more. Overboard much?

That's fun.

Also, here's the cake that I made start to finish in one day. Usually I like to bake the cakes the day before I decorate them to give them time to cool and settle properly. I didn't have that luxury with this cake. It was meant to only be 2 tiers but when I had the 2 baked and iced I realized it wasn't going to be enough servings for what they needed. So I got the okay to make it 3 tiers and quickly baked the other tier.

It was for a surprise 50th birthday party. Carrot cake with cheesecake filling and cream cheese icing. It's covered in fondant obviously. I hear it was yummy and the birthday girl sent me the nicest thank you note on my facebook page. That's my favorite part of making cakes. I love being a part of someone's special day!

What a week!

2010-01-22T09:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I like to pretend that we're living a pioneer life. This week was much easier to do that.

We've had some terrible weather this week. Rain everyday. Our entire back patio is flooded 3 inches. Most of the rock in our backyard is covered in water too. Makes me regret not having a rain barrel to collect the rain to use later. What makes this more of an adventure is that our electricity got shut off. Well not all of it. They put it on an extender so that we could still use lights, the refrigerator, tv and a few other things. No heat, no oven, no hot water and no blow dryer!! I paid the bill through our bank's bill pay system. They took it out of our account but hadn't paid the electric company right away. So they came and shut us off. It's been such a hassle getting it worked out. They should be by sometime today to turn it back on. This is day 3 though and if nothing else, I have a cake due tomorrow morning that I haven't even baked yet. I have a feeling it's going to be a long night.

We've had to be pretty creative with meals. With no heat source, it's been a lot of cereal and peanut butter and jelly. This was very helpful to me though because now I see that if we were ever in an emergency situation, all the canned and boxed food doesn't do a lot of good without a way to cook it. I've got some thinking to do, but one thing I suggested to Mike yesterday was a solar oven. Sounds cool, right?

Yesterday, we had a tornado warning. In Arizona!! That basically never happens. When Ash heard about it, he lost his cool. He began wailing and saying that we were all going to die and there was so much he still wanted to do in life. I couldn't help it. I laughed. I told him we were going to be fine and filled him in on our plan just in case a tornado did come.

When Mike got home from work, we quickly gathered the chickens and put them in a makeshift coop in the garage. Then we made sure nothing important that could get ruined in the storm was left outside. We turned on the radio and waited for something to happen. It was pretty exciting actually. We kept in touch with other friends in town to trade information and when the wind got really bad, we watched as our trees swayed violently back and forth. I was actually hoping they would fall down since I hate those trees but they stayed up.

The rain has been constant but the tornado warnings have been lifted. I gotta say, I'm really missing the sun. This is pretty strange for us here to not see the sun for such a long stretch of time.

Oooh! The electricity just got turned back on!! Shower, here I come!

This is cute.

2010-01-17T14:59:00.000-08:00

So how attractive is this?

We are expecting a week of rain starting tomorrow.

Since the chicken coop remains unfinished, we needed to cover their run, which we've been using as a temporary coop, with a tarp to keep the chickies nice and dry. I'm going to be a happy girl once this coop project is finished.

The chickens seem a bit confused about it all.

But thankfully, since the chickens have been cooped up (hahahaha!) the seeds I've been sowing have finally been given the chance to grow.

My onions are sprouting!

The radishes are coming up too!

Even the lettuce is starting to grow.

These will be my final shot at getting carrots this go-round. If nothing else, I'm very persistent.

But I am getting tomatoes. Enough actually that I've stopped having to buy them from the grocery store. I eat a lot of tomatoes too. So... that's positive.

Here's a Mortgage Lifter tomato starting to ripen. Oh and in case you're wondering, my mortgage hasn't been lifted yet. I claim false advertising!

I'm getting tons of cherry tomatoes. They're so yummy.

So yeah. That's about all. I've got to make a run to get dog food. And maybe some dog soap too. She's very smelly. Like, very.

Yes, I do still make cakes

2010-01-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

It has been a while but I am still making cakes. I thought I'd share the cake I made last night. There's a couple at church who have been married for 35 years. They're renewing their vows today and asked me to make a cake for them. The wife browsed cake pictures on the internet for days and finally settled on this design. She provided the flowers for the cake.

It's a pretty heavy cake. The bottom tier is a 12 inch chocolate cake and the top tiers are 9 inch and 6 inch vanilla cakes. Nothing too fancy. But I am pleased with the way it turned out.

I think...

2010-01-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

You got a little something right there.

Nope, still there.

Oh dear. This is a little embarrassing.

Seriously, do you not feel that?

Yeah, just forget it. Poor Gretchen. No table manners whatsoever.

Time to Kill

2010-01-11T19:01:00.000-08:00

It seems so heartless. These poor little babies who've done nothing to nobody. Especially nothing to merit such a cruel death. Unfortunately, they must die for the greater good.

When I planted my pepper and eggplant seeds, I sowed two seeds per planting cell. This way my chances of having one seedling per cell were greater. Now that the seeds have sprouted and little baby plants are growing, I had to thin them out. "Thin" is just a euphemism for murder really. I had to murder some plants to help the other plants grow bigger and stronger. It's a horrible burden having to play God.

I put it off for a few days thinking maybe I could just separate them when I move them into bigger pots and keep them all, but the truth is, I don't have room in my grow-room (read: closet) for all of them and I definitely don't have room in my garden to grow them all.

Tonight was the night. I snipped out the weaker of the two plants in each cell.

DON'T JUDGE ME!!

Oh the carnage.

Now the survivors have a chance. They have the opportunity to grow and produce children. Something the others can't say.

I feel horrible. I'm just glad I only planted one tomato seed in each of those cells. I don't have the heart to kill a tomato plant.

Good News!

2010-01-05T11:57:00.001-08:00

The seedlings are up!!

I've got the peppers, eggplant and tomatoes now growing happily in my bedroom closet. Last year I put them in the ground on the first week of February. I'm not so sure that will work this year, but we'll see.

Also...

I finally taught Liberty to sit and she's doing it consistently. There's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Putting in a Fruit Bed

2010-01-02T08:42:00.000-08:00

Mike and I spent the majority of yesterday doing some hard work in the backyard. I wanted to build a small new garden bed for fruit. I bought some strawberry crowns and blackberry plants to put inside.

So here's the spot where I wanted to put the bed.

As you can see I had a lot of digging and rock clearing to do. And I'm proud to say I did it by myself!! It was quite the workout. (Please don't mind the dog poop. It was poop day for Ash)

I got some scrap wood from Home Depot. I know it's not the best but it'll do for a while and it was only fifty cents each piece.

Mike cut one piece in half for me.

Then he wanted me to do the drilling and screwing because he thought it would be good for me.

He ended up having to finish it for me because while it may have been good for me, me with a drill was not good for either the bed or the drill.

So once we had it built and set in place, I loosened up the existing soil inside and we moved the rock around it to make it sturdier. I wanted to fill this bed with compost that we've been making. Since it's not all the way done yet, I had to sift it to get the big pieces out. Mike shoveled for me and I sifted.

Then I had to get the blackberry plants soaking in a bucket of water for 30 minutes.

Here is the new bed all filled and ready to go. I love the nice fluffy compost and have high hopes for this bed.

After this shot, I planted my strawberry crowns and left the blackberries to soak a little while longer. Then Mike and I went inside to take a nap. It was hard work and we were tuckered. I woke up to the dog barking outside and jumped out of bed. I had a bad feeling.

It seems that Ash let the dog outside while we were sleeping and the dog completely tore up the entire bed, eating the strawberry plants and blackberry plants while she was at it. Most of the compost was thrown all over the rocks.

I was devastated. I managed to find 5 of the 10 strawberry plants and tried to scoop as much compost back into the bed as I could. It's definitely not enough though and the bed now has a lot of little rocks mixed in. So... I'm going to have to go back to Home Depot and buy some soil and some new plants. Also, Mike is looking for a new home for Liberty.

Oh yeah

2010-01-01T10:48:00.001-08:00

Oh Home Depot. You sure know how to make a girl happy!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some work to do.

Hehehehe.

I've got the itch!!

2009-12-30T19:37:00.001-08:00

I wasn't completely sure I would get the itch this year because of all that is going on in my life, but I got it alright. Loud and clear and desperately needing to be scratched. I'm needing to get my hands in the dirt. Like, for reals. I've been dreaming about it and everything.

My fall/winter garden hasn't done very well because of about 9 furry/feathered creatures who have taken up residence in my sanctuary. The carrots, which once filled an entire 3' by 6' bed didn't stand a chance. It's funny because when they all first started sprouting in their neat little rows that Mike and I marked out for them, we stood over them and laughed about what on earth we would do with all of those carrots. I guess the good Lord didn't want us to have to find out. Liberty showed them no mercy. After I replanted, the chickens then showed them who was boss, along with all of the lettuce, peas, beans, and all but 1 pumpkin. Remember how I said a few months ago that I was praying for more pumpkins? My prayer was answered. I had 9 growing nicely. But then my feathered friends decided I might be getting a big head about my pumpkin successes and brought me back to square 1, leaving only the original pumpkin.

Oh well. Such is life.

My tomatoes are still going, although very slowly since it is quite chilly out there. I get a few tomatoes a day and I'm happy.

But I'm still itching for a fresh start. I want to see seeds burst forth from the ground full of the promise of yummy meals to come. I want to bring in baskets and baskets full of veggies. So much so that I'm forced to give out of the abundance of it all.

I have big plans for my backyard this spring. Big plans. Plans that should overwhelm and scare me but no. I'm not shying away from this challenge. I'm definitely going to have to do some research on laying paving stones (hint hint) but this is my project and I will do it.

I've started my pepper and eggplant seeds. I did 6 kinds of peppers and 2 kinds of eggplant. I wanted to start my tomatoes this week too, but silly me left the bag of seed starting mix outside and Liberty had her way with it. The odds are stacked against me from the beginning.

It's going to be an exciting year. Can you feel it?

R.I.P little Bandit

2009-12-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

My favorite chicken, Bandit, is no longer with us. I went out his morning to go feed and visit with the chickens and all came running to me except for the smallest, Bandit. Bandit was a bantam chicken (which just means a smaller chicken) so she could fit through the drainage hole in our block fence. Twice, I found her in the neighbor's yard after she squeezed her way through that hole. So this morning I went around to the front of the house and listened for her peeping. Nothing. I went back to the backyard and did a little walk through to try and find her. Nothing. I sat by the garden and thought for a while. "Where could she have gone?"

That's when I saw it.

Two fluffy wings, bodiless, lying on the ground. More chicken fluff was scattered nearby.

I'm so sad. Bandit was my favorite. She was a Bantam Partridge Silkie, just a ball of fluff really, and sadly, the last picture I took of her was when she was still just a baby.

Goodbye you cute little chickie. You were a sweetie.

Day 24 of Christmas Cookies

2009-12-24T09:06:00.000-08:00

It's here. The final day of cookies. It's been such a fun road to travel for my whole family. The kids loved tasting and helping, Mike loved seeing me be all domestic, and I loved it all. I loved every smell that came from my oven, every ingredient I had to go out and buy, and even every dish that I had to wash. It was such a great experience for me.

Now that the last batch has been baked, the cookies have been packed up and we will be delivering them to neighbors later today. It's going to seem weird not having to find a new cookie recipe to make tonight. Or trying to make an early morning posting deadline.

Truth be told, I'm still going to be baking some more cookies today. We are bringing cookies to both of Mike's parents house and all the good ones have been taken. So I have 3 recipes to remake today.

Here is today's recipe. So simple yet so tasty. We pop these babies like potato chips. They're so addictive.

Spritz Cookies

1 cup butter softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional but really delicious)
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar on medium speed in the bowl of an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add the egg yolks, salt, vanilla and almond extract. Mix until well blended. Add flour and mix until smooth.

Chill dough for about 30 minutes just to firm it up a bit.

Preheat oven to 350.

Prepare your cookie press by fitting it with the desired design plate and filling it with your cookie dough. Follow your manufacturer's instructions for pressing the cookie dough. Space cookies about 1 inch apart. You can sprinkle unbaked cookies with colored sugars or sprinkles. Bake 1 sheet at a time for 9-12 minutes or until edges of cookies are barely brown. Remove from the cookie sheets and let cool on a cooling rack.

Thank you all for following me on my adventure. I wish you a very Merry Christmas. Make it memorable. I'm pretty sure I did.

Day 23 of Christmas Cookies

2009-12-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

Woo! 1 more day. I can do this. I've got bags and bags of cookies in my kitchen right now. After we finish baking the 24th recipe, my kids and I will pack them up and bring them to neighbor's houses. Fun fun!

Carrot Cake Cookies

1 pouch Betty Crocker oatmeal cookie mix (1 lb 1.5 oz)
1/2 cup butter softened
1/2 cup finely grated carrots
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 egg

Heat oven to 375. In a large bowl stir all ingredients together until a stiff dough forms.

On ungreased cookie sheets, drop dough by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart. Bake 9-10 minutes until edges are light golden brown. Cool 2 minutes and transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

FROSTING

4 oz cream cheese softened
1 tablespoon butter softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Mix frosting ingredients in a small bowl until smooth. If it's too thin add some more powdered sugar. Spread frosting over the cooled cookies. Sprinkle with nuts if you like. Store tightly covered in the refrigerator.

Day 22 of Christmas Cookies

2009-12-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

We had such a blast yesterday making cookies. The whole house smelled like sugar! It was great.

I love today's cookie because of the colors. You can't go wrong with a pink and brown color combo. The cookie itself is not overly sweet either. I think it would compliment a cup of cocoa or a cappuccino really nicely.

Chocolate-Cherry Pinwheels

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
1/4 cup maraschino cherries, finely chopped and drained on paper towels
3 drops red food color
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

In a large bowl beat butter sugar and eggs with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Beat in flour, baking powder and salt until well blended. Place half of the dough in a separate bowl.

Beat almond extract, cherries and food coloring into half the dough. Divide the cherry dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate about 45 minutes or until firm.

Beat vanilla, milk, and cocoa into the other half of dough. Divide dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate about 45 minutes or until firm.

Place 1 portion of chocolate dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper and roll into a 10x7 inch rectangle. Repeat with one part of the cherry dough.. Refrigerate both about 30 minutes more. Peel top sheets of waxed paper from both doughs. Turn cherry dough upside down onto chocolate dough. Remove the waxed paper and roll doughs together starting at the long side to form a log. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours. Repeat with remaining doughs.

Heat oven to 350. Cut rolls into 1/4 inch pieces with a sharp knife. Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet 1 inch apart. Bake 8-11 minutes or until surface appears dull. Remove from cookie sheet onto a cooling rack.